New Cassel homes to be offered in affordable housing lottery

First-time home buyers in the Town of North Hempstead can take a gamble by entering a lottery to own an affordable home in New Cassel.

Four new homes are up for sale through the lottery hosted by the town along with Nassau County, the Long Island Housing Partnership, and the town’s Community Development Agency.

The homes are priced around $230,000 after subsidies provided by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the New York State Homes and Community renewal grant. The houses on Urban Avenue and Sheridan Street, which are still under construction, will have three bedrooms, 1½ bathrooms and a garage.

“The housing lottery will provide an opportunity for people who otherwise might not have had the ability to own a home, to have that dream of homeownership come true,” Town Supervisor Judi Bosworth said in a news release.

The need for affordable housing across Long Island is “great and tremendous,” said Peter Elkowitz, president of Hauppauge-based Long Island Housing Partnership.

“You need to create affordable workforce housing to keep the economy strong here on Long Island and to provide housing for all the people,” Elkowitz said. “Many more people are still in need of decent, safe, affordable housing.”

The town sells affordable homes as often as it can, depending on property availabilities, said Joe Santamaria, assistant executive director of the Community Development Agency.

In New Cassel, the town identifies homes that are determined to be dangerous to the surrounding community and puts them on an acquisition list, Santamaria said. Although the town does not purchase all properties on the list, homes that are acquired are either renovated or demolished and rebuilt.

There were about 16 properties on the list as of July, according to town documents. Two of the homes in the lottery were once blighted properties on the town’s list.

New affordable housing created from dilapidated homes reduces blight and is an “overall win for the community,” said Joe Sanseverino, assistant vice president of the Long Island Housing Partnership.

In order to be eligible for the housing lottery, applicants must meet several criteria: a minimum down payment of 3 percent of the purchase price plus closing costs; the ability to obtain a mortgage and meet payments; and good credit and employment history. Applications are due Oct. 31. They can be submitted online at the Long Island Housing Partnership website, lihp.org, or mailed to the partnership office, 180 Oser Ave., Suite 800, Hauppauge, NY 11788, postmarked by the deadline.