Huntington Now Covers HTHC’s Jan 2020 28-Page Affordable Housing Report

The Huntington Township Housing Coalition’s (HTHC) new 28-page report Huntington Housing Horizons 2030 received favorable coverage in Huntington Now in an article written by Pam Robinson. 

Robinson says:

“A housing coalition plans to present a report Monday to the Town Board on its findings, including recommendations for more affordable housing in Huntington.

The 28-page Huntington Township Housing Coalition documents a shortage of affordable housing needed for a workforce essential to keeping residents here and to stopping businesses from moving away.

The town’s Horizons 2020 report commissioned in 2008 found the following;
• All segments of the population are affected by the scarcity of affordable housing in Huntington.
• Rental housing options for Huntington’s lower-income residents are limited.
• The shortage of decent affordable housing has resulted in the proliferation of illegal, overcrowded and sub-standard housing.“

We thank Huntington Now and Ms Robinson for the coverage.

Read the entire article at Coalition to Recommend More Affordable Housing

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LIBN Covers HTHC’s Jan 2020 28-Page Affordable Housing Report

The Huntington Township Housing Coalition’s (HTHC) new 28-page report Huntington Housing Horizons 2030 received favorable coverage in Long Island Business News (LIBN) in an article written by David Winzelberg. 

Winzelberg says:

“A new report presented by the Huntington Township Housing Coalition to Huntington’s town board Monday cites the critical need for affordable housing and outlines several steps the town should take to address the issue.

The 28-page report, titled “Huntington Housing Horizons 2030: Documenting the need for affordable housing in Huntington,” claims the town has under-achieved its 2008 recommendation of adding nearly 2,800 units of affordable housing, as less than 18 percent of that number has been built in the last 12 years.

Proposed actions to boost the supply of affordable housing include making accessory apartments easier to create; enacting the Melville Employment Center plan to allow for more mixed-use buildings that can create more affordable apartments; and end exemptions of a 2017 law that requires all new developments have a 20-percent affordable component.”

It should be noted that while the caption on the picture of Creekside by the Harbor correctly reports the rent of the market rate apartments, the complex also contains several affordable units which are awarded by lottery by the town’s CDA.  We thank LIBN and Mr. Winzelberg for the coverage.

Read the entire article at http://bit.ly/LIBN_More-Affordable-Housing

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HTHC Releases 28-Page Report: Huntington Housing Horizons 2030

The Huntington Township Housing Coalition today published their new report on the state of affordable housing in Huntington.  Titled Huntington Housing Horizons 2030: Documenting the Need for Affordable Workforce Housing in Huntington, the report documents the need for affordable housing, looks at what has been built in Huntington since the town’s master plan, Horizons 2020, came out in 2008, and suggest steps that could be taken to create more affordable workforce housing.

“Horizons 2020 projected that the town would need an additional 2789 affordable homes by 2020, and so with 2020 upon us we thought it was a good time to review whether the town achieved its goals,” said Roger Weaving, President of the HTHC.  “We’ve only built just over 500 affordable homes, or under 20% of the projected additional need.  The Town needs to do better.”

The HTHC will be formally presenting the report to the town during the public portion of the Town of Huntington Board meeting at 100 Main Street, Huntington, NY, on Monday, January 13^th, which begins at 2:00 PM.  “It’s clear that setting the zoning and other requirements as we have them will not produce the necessary housing,” said Weaving.  “We are calling on the Town Board to take an active lead in creating the conditions and working with landowners and developers who will produce the necessary housing.”

While the report focuses on the Town of Huntington, its 28 footnoted pages contain comparative data on Brookhaven, Babylon, Oyster Bay, Smithtown, Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Islip that would make the report of interest to people who do not live and work in Huntington. In addition, the lack of affordable housing is a regional problem, and much of the data cited is regional in nature.

To
access the report, go to the HTHC website at https://huntingtonhousingcoalition.org/.  For a link directly to the report, please use
http://huntingtonhousingcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/HTHC_200329_Huntington-Housing-Horizons_2030.pdf.

For further information, please contact Roger Weaving, President, HTHC, at contact@huntingtonhousingcoalition.org, 631-793-1643.

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HTHC comments on proposed C6 zoning changes

Dear Supervisor Lupinacci and Members of the Town Board,

The Huntington Township Housing
Coalition appreciates your efforts to address the issues surrounding housing in
the Town of Huntington, and especially those in the Village.  A thriving downtown attracts many potential
customers, and if we do not address the issue of parking, we will choke off the
health of commerce in the town. In addition, we recognize the need to take
adequate steps to ensure the quality of our groundwater and our bay for
generations to come.

Of course, if we do not address our
affordable housing crisis, then the people who work in our thriving restaurants
and shops will have a difficult choice of either very long commutes from
outside the town- often not possible for restaurant workers who get off their
evening shift after the buses have run- or to live in illegal apartments, where
they have no recourse should they find the building substandard or
overcrowded.  The recently-passed ADU ordinance
is a good step in that direction, but it is far from enough.

At the HTHC we are very concerned
about the effect the additional restrictions in the proposed changes to the C-6
law will have on building in the town of Huntington.  It is always difficult to build affordable
units, and adding more steps and tighter restrictions will make it even more
difficult.  We therefore suggest the
following ideas:

1. Keep the proposed restrictions
   specific to the already-sewered area of Huntington Village and Halesite.  It seems like most of the issues that
   people want addressed are specific to the Village, so let’s not overreach with
   the legislation, and keep the changes specific to the affected area.  Other parts of town have different geographies,
   different issues, and different water tables. 
   And broad sweeping laws can have unintended consequences.  If these changes stop all building in the
   Village, we are still going to need to build somewhere, or we will exacerbate
   our illegal apartment problem.
2. Consider exempting projects that have
   a 50% or more affordable component from the new restrictions.  We are at a point where even people who are
   not fans of building more apartments will concede we need more affordable
   housing, so providing an incentive to create more than the presently-mandated
   20% affordable quota may be welcomed by developers
3. Build a new parking structure now.  If parking is the problem, then a parking
   structure is the answer, and it always has been.  A parking structure would allow the town to consider
   variances on parking for new apartment buildings, leading to the creation of
   more affordable units.
4. Be very cautious about the wording of
   your language on architectural review.  While almost everyone can name at least one
   recently-built building in town they think is ugly (and not always the same
   one!), architectural review has a long history of being used as a tool for
   segregation and for stopping affordable housing.  By its very nature it is decided by more
   subjective judgement than other aspects of zoning, and requiring extra steps
   (like a full-blown architectural review board) or too many extra flourishes
   will drive up costs and make building affordably even less possible.
5. Attack the water issues with the
   facts, not what people think the facts are.  Hypoxia in Long Island Sound and Huntington
   Bay is primarily due to excess nitrogen that comes from the run-off fertilizers
   for residents’ lawns, and the primary cause of pollution in the ground water is
   septic tanks.  Both fertilizer and septic
   tanks are characteristics of single-family homes, not apartments above
   stores.  Nor is the town waste treatment
   facility in any danger of reaching capacity any time soon, so there is plenty
   of time to consider expanding it if the town deems it necessary.  Can the town do a better job enforcing the
   rule that water that falls on your property stays on it, or by requiring
   offsets to allow the highway department to capture more water before it reaches
   the Village?  Absolutely.  But the answer to improving our groundwater
   and the water in the bay lies in restricting fertilizers and getting more homes
   on sewers and off septic tanks, not in forcing people into illegal apartments
   because we make it too hard to build the necessary living units.

Again, we appreciate you trying to
address some of the town’s longest-existing and most-pressing problems.  We hope you will consider our proposals.

Sincerely,

Roger Weaving Jr.

President, Huntington Township Housing Coalition

HTHC position on proposed C6 zoning modifications

The Huntington Township Housing Coalition appreciates the town’s efforts to address the issues surrounding housing in the Town of Huntington, and especially those in the Village. A thriving downtown attracts many potential customers, and if we do not address the issue of parking, we will choke off the health of commerce in the town. In addition, we recognize the need to take adequate steps to ensure the quality of our groundwater and our bay for generations to come.

Of course, if we do not address our affordable housing crisis, then the people who work in our thriving restaurants and shops will have a difficult choice of either very long commutes from outside the town- often not possible for restaurant workers who get off their evening shift after the buses have run- or to live in illegal apartments, where they have no recourse should they find the building substandard or overcrowded. The recently-passed ADU ordinance is a good step in that direction, but it is far from enough.

At the HTHC we are very concerned about the effect the additional restrictions in the proposed changes to the C-6 law will have on building in the town of Huntington. It is always difficult to build affordable units, and adding more steps and tighter restrictions will make it even more difficult. We therefore suggest the following ideas:

1. Keep the proposed restrictions specific to the already-sewered area of Huntington Village and Halesite. It seems like most of the issues that people want addressed are specific to the Village, so let’s not overreach with the legislation, and keep the changes specific to the affected area. Other parts of town have different geographies, different issues, and different water tables. And broad sweeping laws can have unintended consequences. If these changes stop all building in the Village, we are still going to need to build somewhere, or we will exacerbate our illegal apartment problem.
2. Consider exempting projects that have a 50% or more affordable component from the new restrictions. We are at a point where even people who are not fans of building more apartments will concede we need more affordable housing, so providing an incentive to create more than the presently-mandated 20% affordable quota may be welcomed by developers
3. Build a new parking structure now. If parking is the problem, then a parking structure is the answer, and it always has been. A parking structure would allow the town to consider variances on parking for new apartment buildings, leading to the creation of more affordable units.
4. Be very cautious about the wording of your language on architectural review. While almost everyone can name at least one recently-built building in town they think is ugly (and not always the same one!), architectural review has a long history of being used as a tool for segregation and for stopping affordable housing. By its very nature it is decided by more subjective judgement than other aspects of zoning, and requiring extra steps (like a full-blown architectural review board) or too many extra flourishes will drive up costs and make building affordably even less possible.
5. Attack the water issues with the facts, not what people think the facts are. Hypoxia in Long Island Sound and Huntington Bay is primarily due to excess nitrogen that comes from the run-off fertilizers for residents’ lawns, and the primary cause of pollution in the ground water is septic tanks. Both fertilizer and septic tanks are characteristics of single-family homes, not apartments above stores. Nor is the town waste treatment facility in any danger of reaching capacity any time soon, so there is plenty of time to consider expanding it if the town deems it necessary. Can the town do a better job enforcing the rule that water that falls on your property stays on it, or by requiring offsets to allow the highway department to capture more water before it reaches the Village? Absolutely. But the answer to improving our groundwater and the water in the bay lies in restricting fertilizers and getting more homes on sewers and off septic tanks, not in forcing people into illegal apartments because we make it too hard to build the necessary living units.

We appreciate the town board is trying to address some of the town’s longest-existing and most-pressing problems. We hope they will consider our proposals.