Man's house torn down while he was in Florida

From NBC:

A law in New York’s biggest town allows the town to demolish homes deemed “dangerous” or “abandoned” — and it is affecting hundreds of people.

“This was the lot,” Phil Williams said as he stood in an empty yard in the West Hempstead neighborhood he once called home. “And as you can see, there is nothing left.”

Williams went to Florida in December 2014 for knee surgery. When he returned months later in August, his house was gone.

“I bought the house from my dad in 1974,” Williams recalled. “My wife and I lived there. We had six children that lived in the house.”

The Town of Hempstead tore down Williams’ house according to Chapter 90 of town law.

It’s a law that allows building inspectors to identify and demolish structures that they deem are dangerous or abandoned. Currently, the town is dealing with 850 open Chapter 90 cases.

The town’s definition of dangerous is defined, in part, as something that is "…unsafe structurally, or a fire hazard or a nuisance to the general public."

"The house was not a danger. It’s just a ridiculous statement," Williams said.

It wasn’t just the house that was a loss for Williams, though. Decades worth of personal belongings and memories — all of them, gone.

Now, he is taking the town to court.

Hempstead also has illegal conversion problem

From WPIX:

Santos Herrera shared pictures of his six-year-old boy in front of the bedroom he died in when a bus slammed into the house Tuesday night. What was an apparent accident may now end in criminal charges however, but not against the bus driver.

The tragic Nassau County bus accident is exposing chronic problems in this town: rampant illegal pedestrian crossings and landlords running unregulated homes overstuffed with poor renters.

Landlord Leo DiLiberti, who owns multiple rental houses in Hempstead, was also at the home this morning with a crew demolishing what remained of the enclosed porch filled with mattresses and furniture. The Village has taken him to court previously for running a boardinghouse here and illegally converting the basement into bedrooms for a mother to use for her children. He pleaded guilty and paid a $500 fine. When asked about the six people occupying his first floor and whether the apartment is legal, he insisted it was legit, and defended it, saying, "What are you going to do? Sometimes they can't afford a regular apartment so they all have to chip in." But Village Inspectors were on the scene looking into whether the home was illegally converted.