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August 25, 2003

Homeless Camps

Homeless trash is strewn through a makeshift homeless "shanty town" between the
Meadowbrook Parkway and Merrick Avenue across from Eisenhower Park in East Meadow.

2003 August 25, Newsday.

Also in Eisenhower Park
in the woods off Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays
a dirt road south of the Ronkonkoma train station.

Some Call It Home
By Lauren Terrazza, Staff Writer

2003 August 26

The tents and the tarps strung over tree branches are nearly impossible to see.
Just off the Meadowbrook Parkway, through a hole in a metal fence and along a
meandering path through scrub oak and old shopping carts is a community living
in the shadows of the everyday world.

There's Louie the Lip, a Vietnam veteran who displays a tattered American flag
alongside his charcoal stove and green tent. There's Old Man Jim, whose
collection of the skeletons of at least 30 shopping carts lies beyond a rusty
sewing machine and an old bike. And there's the tent surrounded by a white
picket fence, along with two pink plastic flamingoes and a few well-fed cats that
stand guard at its entrance.

About a half dozen homeless men and a few women call this home, a triangular
stretch of state land in East Meadow sandwiched between the parkway and
Merrick Avenue. It also was the home of Robert Lundy, who was stabbed to
death in nearby Eisenhower Park over the weekend, reportedly because of a $4
dispute over beer.

"They're there because they've lost their family, they're disabled, or no one
cares about them. It shouldn't be this way," said Chris Curran, 44, of Levittown,
who said many of his friends live in this shantytown, which he visits once or twice
a week with food or charcoal for their outdoor grills.

Across Long Island, advocates and officials say there are dozens and possibly
hundreds of homeless adults who never seek government help, preferring to
tough it out in wooded areas, parking lots or abandoned buildings from
Hempstead to Hampton Bays. Others camp at county and state parks, rotating
every few days to comply with the parks' rules.

While the numbers of homeless families with children seeking housing in shelters
and motels has risen to record levels in recent years and stands at about 700
families Islandwide, the tent population is difficult, if not impossible, to count.
They're mostly single men and a small number of women.

"I don't think it's an enormous number, but there are people hidden in spots and
when we hear about them, we respond," said Louise Skolnik, Nassau's deputy
commissioner of Social Services. She said in the past month, the county has
provided housing assistance to about 10 people who have chosen to live
outdoors. Teams of police, mental health and social workers visit suspected sites
twice a month, she said.

Because it is state land, it is illegal to camp there, state parks police said
Monday. But residents say they are so hidden that their presence often goes
unnoticed. Monday, however, many of the homeless campers had fled, leaving
their belongings behind because they feared police would evict them.

They also don't go to shelters because of the curfews and restrictions, or
because they're afraid of being robbed, according to those who choose to live
outside. Hidden from busy Montauk Highway in Hampton Bays is a smattering of
tents that has been a makeshift community for the past three years, its residents
say. At most, about 10 call the area home.

Monday Mike, 60, who declined to give his last name, recalled life before the
tent, when he lived with his wife and three children in a Hampton Bays house.
After he lost his job painting houses, life started to change because of reasons he
wouldn't revisit. "I was going to go to a homeless shelter," he said. "But there's
all kinds of trouble there. It's safe behind the diner. We don't have problems."

Dean Dubois, 37, agrees. "I'd rather be here and work my way up than be locked
in the system," said Dubois, who for the past nine years has been living off a dirt
road south of the Ronkonkoma train station, in one of the half-dozen or so
abandoned trailers and lean-tos scattered in the woods. He had been a
subcontractor for a fence installation company, but his life took a downturn,
Dubois said, when he found he owed the Internal Revenue Service $10,000.

"I just didn't want to go back on welfare, so I wound up here," he said Monday.

Many who live outdoors collect bottles and cans. On a good day, said Curran, his
friends along the Meadowbrook can make up to $25, enough to buy food to cook
on a kerosene stove or outdoor grill. Others go to soup kitchens and food
pantries. They shower at the bathhouse at Eisenhower Park, which is open to the
public. In the winter, they layer blankets. A few keep warm with kerosene
heaters.

"The Lord brings you through it," said Hope Allison, 19, who said she became
homeless after a disagreement with her family and has chosen the relative
freedom of living outdoors.

"In some ways, it's a lot easier out here," said a man who would identify himself
only as John. "They'll steal your shoes off your feet in a shelter." Besides, he
said, "you can't beat the rent in a tent."

Staff writers Jennifer Sinco Kelleher and Tomoeh Murakami Tse contributed to
this story.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-litent0826,0,3747221.story?coll=ny-li-span-headlines

Posted by dc at 10:33 PM | Comments (1)

August 20, 2003

Huntington Station 2

http://www.newsday.com/mynews/ny-lihunt133412196aug13,0,4204411.story
Plans to Revitalize Draw Opposition
Residents concerned proposal will harm Huntington Station

By Alfonso A. Castillo
STAFF WRITER

2003 August 13

When some of Huntington Station's old-timers remember the area's glory days in
the 1930s, they talk about the bustling downtown where people lived over shops
- a community of merchants and residents all in one place.

Huntington Town officials hope their latest vision to renew the hamlet will bring it
closer to those days, and have proposed building rental apartments over stores.
And like revitalization plans that have come and gone in the past several years,
this one has drawn the ire of many residents who fear it would only exacerbate
the community's problems.

At a four-hour public hearing on Aug. 5, residents blasted the proposal, saying it
would burden already crowded school districts with more children and invite
more poverty and crime into the area.

"They want to turn Huntington Station into more of a Queens environment," said
Huntington School Board member Rich McGrath, who is running for town board
and led a group of residents opposing the plan. "Queens Boulevard and Jericho
Turnpike are the same thing."

The initiative calls for amending Huntington Station's zoning code to allow
developers to build as many as two one-bedroom apartments - up to 750 square
feet each - on top of businesses as long as they meet on-street parking and fire
code guidelines.

Town officials said the plan targets many of the community's needs by boosting
local businesses, providing homes for young families who want to stay in the
town and expanding the tax base.

"You're talking about giving some young couple a start in the community here, so
they can begin, be part of the economic base and give back some of the tax
dollars we've spent on them," Supervisor Frank Petrone told the packed house
last week.

Many residents are skeptical of the plan - one of many the town has pushed
since it launched its most recent effort to revitalize the community, which town
officials and police have said is the center of crime and illegal housing in the
town. A plan the town proposed last year that included several high-rise
apartment buildings was soundly shouted down by a crowd of 1,500 in an April
2002 meeting.

The town-appointed Huntington Station Revitalization Committee went back to the
drawing board before proposing the "mixed-use buildings" plan. Among
residents' biggest complaints is that the town did not perform studies to gauge
the impact of the new rental apartments - which some residents believe are out
of sync with the rest of the town.

"They attract lower-income individuals," town resident Heinz Rosen told the
board. "If you increase the [rental] apartments, you increase the low income,
you increase the crime."

Other residents, who supported the plan, said much of the sentiment at the
meeting was thinly veiled bigotry.

"[Opponents] are saying, 'We don't need poor people. We don't need people who
can't buy homes. Let them live somewhere else,' " said Huntington housing
activist Charles Werner, who added that he would urge the town to allow for
more bedrooms in apartments to accommodate larger families.

Town officials said town law allows for apartments over stores in much of the
town and this would only regulate it. They also said the apartments would not
necessarily constitute "affordable housing" and could be market priced.

Nonetheless, Petrone told the crowd he would arrange meetings with officials
from all the involved school districts to discuss the impact of the plan.

The town board was scheduled to vote on the proposal at the Aug. 5 meeting, but
chose to postpone a decision. "The consensus is they may need to take a closer
look at it," town spokesman Don McKay said.

Posted by dc at 01:47 AM | Comments (0)

Huntington Station 1

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vphun133411888aug13,0,3328466.story
Shouting and Ire Won't Revitalize Huntington Station

2003 August 13

Coming soon to one corner of downtown Huntington is a new building with
ground- floor stores topped by market-value apartments. Such housing
configurations are part of what help make Huntington, Northport and a host of
other hot communities desirable places to live. But mere mention of the
possibility of the same thing for Huntington Station pulls hordes of opponents to
Town Hall, fired up by misinformation.

That's what happened, again, last week when hundreds of residents turned out to
a planning board meeting to voice, loudly in some instances, opposition to a
proposal for a so-called "overlay district" that is supposed to help revitalize
Huntington Station. Is it a good idea? Is it a bad one? Nobody really knows
because angry town residents, blatant politicking and overheated rhetoric
trumped any chance of a meaningful policy discussion at Tuesday's meeting.

But the Town of Huntington isn't blameless here either. Yes, some residents
received bad information about the proposal from its foes. But the town also has
done a lousy job of communicating its revitalization plans and the impact they
would have on schools, traffic and other areas. Take the issue of apartments
over stores: Officials say they are allowed under current town code. That building
coming soon to downtown Huntington? It was approved at the same meeting
where the overlay district was opposed. Interestingly enough, the idea behind
the district is to encourage some kinds of development (restaurants, shops and,
where appropriate, market-value apartments) and discourage others (such as
car-repair shops).

Redeveloping Huntington Station will help the community and the town. But to get
there, this cycle of propose/get-the-crowds-out-to oppose has to end. It should
be replaced with information, debate and from that, good policy.

Posted by dc at 01:45 AM | Comments (0)