Legislation recently introduced in Albany that would require landlords renting illegal apartments to pay for the cost of educating the children of the families living in those apartments is troubling.
“This would do a lot to change our power to be able to address illegal apartments,” said Herricks Superintendent of Schools John Bierwirth at a recent school board meeting.
The Town of North Hempstead already aggressively enforces state and town housing laws. When the town is made aware of illegal apartments or other violations of the housing code, it can send an inspector to that address.
If the town inspectors find that a landlord is renting illegal housing units, the landlord can be forced to remove illegally installed kitchens and pay stiff fines. It happens all the time. More than anything this is a matter of public safety and health.
The new law is a back-door attempt to force the impoverished families that squeeze into these illegal basement apartments to move with their school-age children to another district.
Even if the proposed law is passed, we are not convinced that this would address the district’s budget problems in a meaningful way.
Bierwirth said that two students attending the school district for one year cost the district $30,000 to $40,000. We assume that he reached that number by dividing the total budget for the school year by the number of students enrolled in the district.
This is one of those cases where if you torture numbers enough they’ll confess to anything. There are fixed costs in running a school district – for example the superintendent’s salary – that will not be changed by two students more or less.
Bierwirth argues rightly that the school board is obligated to educate all children living in the school district. He then adds that it can take the courts a year or more to sort out complaints that a family is living in an illegal apartment.
It will still take months for the town to prove in court that an apartment is illegal. The new law will encourage landlords to stretch out the legal process as long as possible. The proposed law cannot allow the town to circumvent due process for the sake of the school district?
If the law passes, we may see the day when cautious landlords advertise: No smoking, pets or school-age children.
Bierwirth is hoping that state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) and state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck) will help get this legislation passed in Albany. We hope it never gets to the governor’s desk. If it does, it is likely to be vetoed.
We question whether the real target of this legislation is the illegal apartments or the children of the poor families that live in them.
If these families are forced out and the landlords are punished, the children will still need to go to live somewhere and their children will still need to attend school. Maybe it won’t be the Herricks School District, but some district will have to take on the burden.
