Roosevelt homeless shelter violated town codes

A Roosevelt homeless shelter used by the Nassau County Department of Social Services to place homeless residents has been cited for multiple Town of Hempstead and state code violations, including overcrowding.

The discovery of the violations after a fire inside the shelter at 86 Park Ave., has prompted the county to pull the facility, Peace Valley Haven, from its list of shelters, officials said.

Mike Martino, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, Wednesday issued a statement about the code violations: "Nassau County has added Peace Valley Haven to our Do Not Use list."

Wednesday, Town of Hempstead Supervisor of Inspection Services Raymond Schwarz wrote a letter to Nassau County's commissioner of the Department of Social Service, John Imhof, requesting that Daphne Haynes, operator of Peace Valley Haven Shelters, be removed from the list of shelter providers.

Haynes did not return phone calls Wednesday. Attempts to reach an attorney for Haynes were unsuccessful.

Haynes has in the past refused to allow inspectors into the home following a 2008 complaint about an illegal apartment inside, said Mike Deery, a spokesman for the Town of Hempstead. Because the home is considered a private residence, despite serving as a homeless shelter, town officials can only enter the dwelling with the owner's permission, Deery said.

An investigation after Monday's blaze found that the house contained 17 beds and "was reputed to house 19 occupants," according to a Town of Hempstead letter sent to the county.

The home is certified as a one-family dwelling and requires that residents of the home be related, a town official said.

The fire, which damaged the exterior of the single-family residence, has been labeled suspicious and remains under investigation, said Vincent McManus, an investigator with the Nassau County Fire Marshal's Office. No one was injured.

McManus said there were an unknown number of people inside the home at the time of the fire, but they escaped injury. This week, town officials issued citations at the Park Avenue location for overcrowding, which is a violation of New York State's property maintenance code. Town violations included construction without a permit for conversion of a garage into a library and a dining room area into sleeping quarters. The town also issued a citation for illegal use of a private residence.

"It was used as a makeshift homeless shelter," McManus said of the home. "Everyone was ordered out of the premises."

It was not known if the residents were relocated.