749 Main Street in New Hempstead
NEW CITY – Two men, who had their property foreclosed by Rockland County for failure to pay $54,000 in taxes, are being sued in Rockland County Supreme Court for renting out apartments at the 749 Main Street, New Hempstead property after the county took it over.
County Executive Edwin Day is furious over the illegal actions taken by the two men.
“This is just a scam; it’s outrageous,” Day said of the two men. “This is like renting out the Brooklyn Bridge. The County of Rockland is not interested in being a landlord and to represent themselves as owners of a property is just wrong.”
The county executive has referred the case against the two men, Joseph Greenbaum and Elazer Dancziger, to the sheriff’s office for a criminal investigation.
Tenants were paying Greenbaum $2,000 per month in rent to Dancziger, the property manager, they told investigators.
Rockland took the deed for the single-family home on September 18 in a foreclosure action. Greenbaum, the owner, had not paid property taxes since 2012.
The county offered to help the tenants find new housing and the building has since been vacated.
A year ago, another property owned by Greenbaum, a small grocery store at 137 North Main Street in Spring Valley, was just hours away from being auctioned in a foreclosure sale when he paid an outstanding $37,196 tax bill.
