East Hampton becomes first Suffolk town to get pro-housing certification in the $650M NY program

Gov. Kathy Hochul visited a newly built affordable housing development in East Hampton on Friday, as her office recognized the town as the first certified pro-housing community in Suffolk County. 

The certification recognizes a municipality’s commitment to increasing available housing for its residents. As part of this year’s budget, the governor and legislature made the pro-housing designation a requirement to receive a portion of up to $650 million in state discretionary funding for economic development. 

In addition to East Hampton, Hempstead Village and Long Beach have been certified by the state, joining Mineola, which was the first to receive the designation earlier this year.

Seven more municipalities have applied, and the state is preparing to certify their applications, according to state officials. They are the towns of Brookhaven and Riverhead, and the villages of Freeport, Farmingdale, Port Washington North, Sag Harbor and Westbury.

Hochul told Newsday on Friday that Long Islanders should think about whether their own families would be able to afford homes nearby when they consider proposals for new housing.

"This might be your kids looking for a place to live after college, and you want your children with you," she said in East Hampton. "This could be your parents wanting to downsize and turn their home over to you someday, but they don’t have a smaller apartment to go to. There should not be fear about multifamily housing."

The development where the governor spoke on Friday, called the Green at Gardiner's Point, will offer 50 affordable apartments to renters who meet certain income requirements, with rents at $1,500 for a one-bedroom apartment, $1,784 for two-bedroom apartments and $2,045 for a three-bedroom apartment.

Tenants for the five-building complex, developed through a partnership of Jericho-based Georgica Green Ventures and the East Hampton Housing Authority, were selected through a housing lottery last week.

Rising housing costs

Long Islanders have been faced with rising housing costs for both rentals and for-sale homes. More than half of Long Island renters pay at least 30% of their gross income toward housing costs, which was the highest percentage of renters who are cost-burdened of any region in the state, according to a report released by the state comptroller earlier this year.

Median home prices in Nassau and Suffolk counties set records in June, at $800,000 and $670,000, respectively, and local real estate agents have blamed a lack of homes for sale for driving up prices.

Another group of Long Island municipalities has submitted letters of intent to join the program. They are the towns of Smithtown, Babylon, Islip and Shelter Island; the villages of Patchogue, Greenport, Lindenhurst, Valley Stream, New Hyde Park and Port Jefferson; and the City of Glen Cove. 

Municipalities have two ways to earn the recognition. First, they can submit data to the state showing they have approved permits that increased the number of housing units in their area by 1% over the past year or 3% in the past three years.

If municipalities haven’t met that standard, they still can be certified if they pass a pro-housing resolution that the local government supports "housing production of all kinds in our community …" The locality must also pledge to streamline permitting for multifamily housing and affordable housing and incorporate regional needs into planning decisions, among other provisions.

Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine told Newsday he’d like to see more housing solutions for people at all income levels, particularly for seniors.

"There’s always going to be opposition — people who don’t understand the benefit of affordable housing," he said after the event. "If we are to have a future, we need to have communities where people can afford to live."

But he said the governor has to recognize that supporting housing in the county means providing financial support to connect that housing to sewers.

Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, East Hampton's supervisor, said the town applied for the funding because she recognized the importance of affordable housing and wanted East Hampton to be eligible for state funding to support more projects like the one the governor visited on Friday. 

The state’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative, NY Forward and Regional Council Capital Fund are among the economic development programs tied to achieving pro-housing community status.

The pro-housing communities program followed the governor’s Housing Compact last year for 800,000 units of housing across the state over a decade. That proposal would have allowed the state to override local municipalities’ zoning decisions if they did not keep up with targets for approving new housing. It was met with fierce opposition from suburban lawmakers, including Long Island officials, and didn’t make it into the state budget.

Hochul then shifted this year to the incentive-based approach in the pro-housing communities program. She credited her administration's meetings with town supervisors and village mayors for helping get more municipalities interested. 

Eric Alexander, director of the downtown planning organization Vision Long Island, said the statewide debate over building new housing had led to more resistance at local hearings in the past few years. But he supports the governor’s more recent incentive-based model.

"It’s a wonderful alternative to the state getting involved in mandates and strange regulations which nobody out here wants," he said. “. . . The program is rooted in an incentive approach that I think everybody was asking for." 

By Jonathan LaMantia

jonathan.lamantia@newsday.com@jonlamantia

Jonathan LaMantia covers residential real estate and other business news on Long Island. He previously covered the business of health care for Crain's New York Business.