Nassau County District Attorney Denis Dillon announced that a grand jury would investigate the issue of illegal housing over the next six months to determine the cause of illegal housing. Dillon said the investigative grand jury will hear and examine evidence concerning offenses, misconduct, nonfeasance and neglect in public office, whether criminal or otherwise and will possibly issue a report.

"Having a grand jury investigate the matter will help us get a more thorough look into the problem to determine whether legislative remedies are appropriate," said Dillon. "Something must be done for the betterment of everyone who lives here in Nassau County. I believe it is necessary to take immediate action before disaster occurs. This problem, though not new, has become increasingly worse and though I believe it falls upon the supervision of the local towns, villages and cities, I believe it is important to do everything within my power to help correct the problem."

According to Dillon, while assisting towns and villages over the past six months, the DA's office has discovered that illegal housing is a complex issue that needs immediate attention.

"On January 18, I offered to assist the various towns, villages and cities in Nassau County in combating illegal housing by supplementing their resources with the investigative and prosecutorial resources of my office," Dillon said. "Since then my Criminal Frauds Bureau has assisted local governments with illegal housing investigations and the execution of arrest warrants. Recently we assisted both the Town of Hempstead and the Town of North Hempstead on the investigation of numerous cases throughout their respective townships. The information that we gathered on those offenders has been sent to the local townships for the final determination on whether or not to proceed with a prosecution by them."

Illegal housing will be a hot topic in this year's campaign in the Town of Hempstead.

In response to Dillon's announcement, a spokesperson for Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray issued the following statement: "The Town of Hempstead has been working cooperatively with the district attorney and we're pleased to continue our work together. The town has already been more proactive than other municipalities with regard to illegal housing. We've lobbied for the "Nail and Mail" legislation; we established the rebuttable presumptions; we've served summonses to realtors who are showing homes with illegal apartments and we've increased fines. We've also established shifts for building inspectors so that they can go out at times when people are more likely to be home and on weekends when realtors are showing the apartments."

Murray's opponent in November's election, Democrat Harvey Levinson, said at a press conference this week in which he unveiled a 10-point plan to combat illegal housing that he was happy about the district attorney'sannouncement. Levinson said he wrote the district attorney in November and asked him to get involved in illegal housing. "There's obviously a lot of investors making a lot of money, most of it is paid in cash. My presumption here is that you will see an entire cash economy that is running on this illegal housing industry," said Levinson, a former prosecutor and now county assessor, who believes an investigation would help the problem. "I know of no other prosecutor's office that has done it but I think that nobody has a worse problem than we have."

Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, who attended Levinson's press conference, believes more code enforcement and better prosecution is the answer. "I don't think we need more study. We need more code enforcers and more prosecutions and more fines so people don't think of this as just the cost of doing business," he said.