Housing lottery offers family chance to buy a home on Long Island — for just $275G

Juan Kelly paced with anticipation one morning last week in Uniondale as he waited for a truck to arrive carrying the first floor of what he hopes will be his future home. 

He thought of his wife, Dena, who died almost three years ago, and who he said must have been looking down on him and his daughters, Jalynn and Kimberly, to help him get such an opportunity. 

"I wish she was here," Kelly said of his late wife, "but I'm looking forward to spending every day with my girls — cooking, cleaning and everything that comes with it."

Kelly, who works in maintenance cleaning trains for the Long Island Rail Road, was selected through a lottery to purchase the three-bedroom modular house on a previously vacant lot on Uniondale Avenue for $275,000 from the Uniondale Community Land Trust. The nonprofit, which develops affordable single-family homes on neglected properties, said Kelly will have the first opportunity to purchase the house but the deal is not yet finalized.

On Wednesday, two specially designed flatbed trucks, called toters, carried the house — the first floor in the morning and the second floor in the afternoon — down Uniondale Avenue, where a truck crane was waiting to lift the house onto its foundation. It had been transported from a facility in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where it was built. By the end of the day, the house was standing and watertight with doors, windows and bathroom fixtures already installed.

Kelly, 54, Jalynn, 22, and Kimberly, 19, gathered with officials from the land trust across the street to watch workers assemble the house. The family has been living with Kelly's sister-in-law in Queens Village.

As the first floor was still airborne, Kelly turned to Kimberly, a fine arts student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and said softly, "I can't wait to hang your artwork."

He said he found out about the housing lottery from a Facebook post and thought he would never have a shot to be selected but applied anyway.

"It was the opportunity to get an affordable home, which seems to be kind of out of reach these days in New York," Kelly said.

How the program works

The house is the second developed by Uniondale Community Land Trust toward its goal of creating more affordable homeownership opportunities. At $275,000, the potential purchase price is well below the market value for a single-family home in Uniondale. The median price among single-family homes sold in Uniondale in the second half of 2024 was $625,000, according to data from appraisal firm Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Uniondale Community Land Trust first acquired the 4,000-square-foot lot on Uniondale Avenue in 2019 from the Nassau County Land Bank for $86,250. The project is expected to cost about $650,000.

The sale will only cover about 42% of the project's costs, with the rest coming from federal funding administered by Nassau County, state affordable housing funding and private fundraising, according to Joseph D'Lando, the land trust's project coordinator.

The site was vacant after the previous home there burned down in the early 1990s, the nonprofit said.

But the terms differ from most home sales. The buyer will enter into a 99-year land lease with the nonprofit, which will continue to own the land beneath the home. The goal is to preserve an affordable home in Uniondale in perpetuity.

"The idea is that all the money and all the resources that have been put into making this affordable do not leave with the family," said land trust board member Paul Gibson.

When the future owner sells the home, there will be a cap on how much profit they can reap on the sale. The terms will allow the homeowner to sell for their original purchase price, plus an additional profit determined by the House Price Index for Nassau County, which is measured by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The index rose about 76% from 2014-2024.

The lottery, which received 125 applications, required that homeowners earn between 50% and 80% of Long Island's area median income. That translates to incomes between $54,700 and $87,500 for an individual, with eligible incomes based on household size. A family of four could earn from $78,100 to $124,950 to qualify.

The home is the second funded by the nonprofit after it completed a gut renovation on an existing home on Macon Place in Uniondale and sold it to a lottery awardee in 2021 for $220,000.

Building modular

The Uniondale house's journey started Tuesday night from Simplex Homes in Scranton, with two trucks traveling along I-80, across the George Washington Bridge and Throgs Neck Bridge to a staging area in the parking lot of Nassau Coliseum — about a mile from the vacant lot. 

Anestoria Shalkowski, the land trust's president, said she hopes the modular house will show funders the nonprofit's development capabilities.

"It's a proof of concept for us, and getting this done, while being excited, we're taking notes and we're learning for our next project," she said.

Modular homes are built off-site inside a facility and then transported to their permanent home. They differ from mobile homes, which are built on a steel frame and transported on wheels attached to that chassis, according to the Modular Home Builders Association in Charlottesville, Virginia. The association notes modular homes are bui l t with all-wood construction and don't have a permanent chassis.

The nonprofit opted for a modular home to shorten the construction process and minimize disruption to neighbors, including a Uniondale fire station across the street. The lot's narrow dimensions — 40 by 100 feet — also make it ill-suited as a construction site.

"The use of modular means that one, you have less disruptions in terms of heavy-duty vehicles going back and forth from the property onto the main thoroughfare," Shalkowski said. "Also, it meant that we were completing this project in a shorter time."

While the cost of the project is comparable to traditional construction, building the home in a climate-controlled facility can prevent costly delays and waste in the building process, said Walter Oden, managing director of Sag Harbor-based Oden Development, whom the nonprofit hired to manage the modular building process.

Interior work on the house, including electrical and plumbing, as well as connections to public water and sewer systems, still must be completed before the Kellys could potentially move in, which the nonprofit expects would be sometime in the fall.

When that time comes, Kelly said he most looks forward to cooking and watching movies with his daughters.

"This is just a wonderful opportunity. Part of me almost doesn't feel worthy of it but I am so happy," Kelly said. "God has truly blessed me and my girls."

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.