Town considers boarding up West Babylon, Deer Park homes

The Town of Babylon on Wednesday will hold public hearings to determine whether three homes in West Babylon and Deer Park can be declared a public nuisance and boarded up.

The town will hold the three hearings via a Zoom meeting. The houses are located at West 22nd Street in Deer Park and 14th Street and York Place, both in West Babylon.

Under a town law dubbed the “crack house” law, a property where two or more arrests for certain offenses have taken place within a year can prompt the town to declare the property a public nuisance and they can then board up any structures on the property and evict residents. Such offenses include drug possession, prostitution and gang assaults.

According to documents provided by the town, four individuals in two separate incidents were arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance at the West 22nd Street property in February.  Last month there was also a stabbing at the house. At the 14th Street house, an individual was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana in February and two other individuals were charged with the same crime there In April. The York Place home was the site of an arrest in July for marijuana possession and a separate individual was charged with the same crime there in January.

“The owners have given license to the tenants or their kids to have these types of people hanging out there and the neighbors don’t want it,” town Supervisor Rich Schaffer said. “That’s why we’re being so aggressive.”

The public nuisance law was created with Schaffer’s assistance during his first time as supervisor in the mid-1990s and for a five-year period the town boarded up more than two dozen homes under the code. But public nuisance law hearings dropped off after 1998, until the law was revived by Schaffer in 2013 after he returned as supervisor.

“In the past we’ve tried to work with people when we have these types of situations,” he said, but some individuals have “gotten more brazen” with their crimes.

“There has to be some sort of major consequences,” he said. “The parents have to understand that their kids’ actions are putting their home at risk.”

Since 2013, none of the seven properties which have had hearings for public nuisance law violations — including the recent cases of a Deer Park home and Amityville deli — have been boarded up, town spokesman Dan Schaefer said,

“The goal is to get the owner’s attention,” Schaffer said. “We just want the property to be run right and not negatively impact anyone else’s quality of life.”

The hearings will take place at 3:30 p.m. on the town’s YouTube channel. 

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.