CITY OF NEWBURGH — Zoned as a single-family home, 405 Grand St. had been divided into a 13-unit rooming house.

City of Newburgh inspectors were alerted to a similar situation at 165 Grand St., where a new owner found that two single-family apartments above the street-level storefront had been converted into 11 rooms, Assistant Fire Chief Bill Horton said.

“He called us and said, ‘I’ve got a problem here,’” Horton said. “This guy did the right thing.”

But Newburgh is full of property owners who have done the wrong thing — renting out apartments in buildings rife with code violations, lacking carbon monoxide and smoke detectors, or subdivided into more units than legally allowed.

The city’s efforts to inventory and inspect rental properties has focused not just on legal multifamily housing, but also on single family homes where owners have sought to maximize profits at the expense of tenants’ safety.

Thousands of property owners have begun receiving forms asking them to certify that they have no rental units. They include owners of single family homes.

“The overall goal is to have safe housing in a city that for decades hasn’t had safe housing,” Horton said. “The status quo of do whatever you want … is over.”

In July, inspectors found evidence that four families had been squeezed into a home at 61 Townsend Ave. that is zoned as a two-family residence. Among the discoveries: a third water heater and bathroom in the attic that someone had tried to hide behind paneling.

Newburgh tried to rule out single-family homes as it prepared to inform owners about their responsibility to register rental properties, but decided that too many illegal rentals would fall through the cracks.

Even eliminating homes that get the STAR exemption on property taxes was found problematic, Horton said.

“We found people who are getting the STAR exemption who do not even live in the home,” he said.

Newburgh requires that rental property owners not only register their properties, but also submit to an annual inspection. First approved in 2013, the law was loosely enforced until the March 2015 deaths of three people poisoned by a carbon monoxide leak in a rental property at 55 Lander St.

The building lacked carbon monoxide detectors.

At 405 Grand St., where a “condemned” sign is attached to the front of the building, four of the 13 illegal rooms were in the windowless basement, Horton said. The only route out was a long hallway, he said.

“I couldn’t imagine, if that place caught on fire, people trying to get out of a long hallway,” Horton said.

lsparks@th-record.com