With housing prices soaring and property taxes punishing in many states, owning your own home has become a life-defining situation. Millions of Americans struggle to make mortgage payments in order to raise their kids in a safe environment, free from danger and chaos.

In the New York town of Farmingville, on Long Island, Woodmont Place was once considered a nice street, full of working-class Americans enjoying a slice of suburbia. But that was before a woman named Rosalina Dias bought a house on the block.

Dias is a slumlord, and soon, 33 Woodmont Place was packed with illegal immigrants. Up to 64 of them lived in a 900-square-foot house with two bathrooms. These men slept on mattresses scattered around the floors and, neighbors say, often used the backyard to relieve themselves.

Predictably, the folks living in the neighborhood complained to authorities. Predictably, the authorities did little. In fact, it took more than five years before Rosalina Dias was arrested for refusing to comply with a court order to close the house. When police raided the structure, they found electrical wires hanging from holes in the ceiling, a propane gas tank next to exposed wires and garbage all over the place. The house was condemned.

Just imagine you and your family living on Woodmont Place. Your kids see scores of strange men come and go around the clock. Each time you pass the dilapidated house you are reminded that the value of your property has drastically declined. Who would want to live near that situation?

Rosalina Dias was charging the illegal aliens around $200 apiece to live in squalor. That means this vile woman was taking in about $12,000 a month for a house that cost her about $86,000. Dias was able to do this for more than 60 months.

The only reason Dias was shut down was because a politician named Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, demanded it. And what did Levy get for his trouble? Well, he was roundly criticized by The New York Times and Newsday, and viciously attacked by ideologues. One of them, the Rev. Allan Ramirez, told Newsday Levy was guilty of “ethnic cleansing.”

That was music to Newsday’s ears. One of its headlines tipped the newspaper’s hand: “Dozens of Men Now Left with Nowhere to Go.”

How about going home to their respective countries and obeying the law, Newsday?

But The New York Times was even worse. In an editorial the paper stated: “Mr. Levy sang the law-enforcement tune … bemoaning the dread danger posed by Latino flophouses and charging that TV stations and newspapers … had been wrong to point out the problems with Mr. Levy’s callous assault on slumlords.”

Callous assault on slumlords? Is the New York Times kidding? In my opinion, this Dias woman is a parasite who ruined an entire neighborhood and exploited destitute individuals for money. And Levy’s insistence that the law be enforced is a “callous assault” on her?

This is what we have come to in America. Despicable behavior is now justified by media people so steeped in bone-headed ideology they literally can’t think straight.

The folks living on Woodmont Place are finally rid of a dangerous situation that should have never been allowed to exist. Illegal aliens have no right to live on your block; they are not supposed to be in this country. Soulless slumlords have no right to violate building codes and destroy neighborhoods. Irresponsible media have no right to attack a public servant who is enforcing the law and looking out for the folks.

Woodmont Place has been liberated. But there are many other battles to be fought.

Bill O’Reilly can be reached by writing 5777 West Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045 attn: Bill O’Reilly.