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The East Hampton Housing Authority this week presented the town’s Planning Board with an official site plan application for its planned 38-unit affordable rental apartment development in Amagansett.
Since the project was unveiled two years ago, the number of apartments in the proposal has been trimmed from 40 to 38 and the number of buildings reduced from 17 to 14. The project does include space for four commercial uses, though they will be limited to “community service” businesses, according to the Housing Authority director, Katherine Casey.
The site plan application comes as the Housing Authority prepares to make its second bid for federal and state grants that will be necessary to fund the approximately $17 million cost of constructing the development as designed. The authority failed to win grants in its first application and plans to file a second application in December, but meanwhile has brought its site plan to the town to start the long review process.
Ms. Casey said she is hopeful that the planning review could be completed by early next summer, about the same time that a decision could be expected from the state on funding support. If everything falls into place, with an 18-month construction time frame, she said the town hopes that residents could start moving into the facility sometime in 2020.
“That may be a little optimistic, but we have to be optimistic and do what we can as it comes,” Ms. Casey said on Monday.
The project is forecast to cost some $21 million to complete, including $4 million that the authority has already spent. The bulk of the funding will have to come from state and federal aid, mostly in the form of capital funding support from the sale of tax credits to private companies.
The Housing Authority purchased the 4.6-acre parcel of land in 2015 for $3.4 million, paid for with part of a $4 million bond the Housing Authority took out for the project, with the rest of the funding intended to go toward planning and engineering of the project.
Suffolk County has already committed to pitching in $1.1 million, the approximate cost of the nitrogen-reducing wastewater treatment system to be installed on the property.
Even if all the government aid comes through as hoped, Ms. Casey said, there is still expected to be a gap of as much as $2 million in the funding schedule for the project. At a meeting of the Town Board last Thursday, October 19, she made an appeal to the town to consider using some of its funding reserves—$2 million of which is in the proposed 2018 budget, earmarked for affordable housing uses—to boost the project.
Supervisor Larry Cantwell, who included the additional affordable housing funding in his proposed budget, his last before stepping down, said that he supports the Amagansett project, but he did not say whether the earmarked money should be directed its way. That will be a decision for the new administration and board that will succeed him in January.
“I supported this project from day one, and I continue to support it,” Mr. Cantwell said this week. “I’m sure the town will do whatever is necessary to fill any gaps in funding when the time comes, but that is still a relatively small portion of the overall funding that is needed.”
Mr. Cantwell also noted that mixed-income housing, particularly in the form of rental apartments, is a dire need in the town, which will need to take increasingly aggressive and imaginative steps to creating new, below-market housing for its labor force in the coming years.
“The more units that can be built that fit different income levels, the more our deficits of housing can be addressed across the board,” the supervisor said. “It’s not one or the other. We need rentals, we need homeownership, we need senior housing, we need studio apartments. We need it all.”
The plans for Amagansett submitted to the Planning Board this week show a mix of studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments, with rents ranging from $1,200 to $2,400 a month depending on income qualifications that could make state housing subsidies available to some tenants.
The layout calls for four studio apartments as well as 11 one-bedroom, 11 two-bedroom and 12 three-bedroom apartments. The four commercial spaces, Ms. Casey said, would be available only to companies whose operation carries a direct community benefit, like nursing or home health aides, a temp agency or a “WeWork”-style shared office space for small businesses that do not have their own offices.
Rents for the residential units would be set according to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development formula that calculates rents relative to the average median income for the region. Anyone earning less than 30 percent of the median income level would be eligible to pay a lower rent level and receive subsidies that could leave them responsible for as little as just a few hundred dollars a month in rent. Those earning between 30 and 60 percent of the median would qualify for the lower rents but would not be eligible for subsidies. Anyone earning more than 60 percent of median income would pay a higher rate for rent.
At current federally set levels, the studio apartments would rent for $1,230 a month and would not be eligible for reduced rates or subsidies of any kind. One-bedroom apartments would be available for $1,211 for low-income tenants, or $1,533 for those who don’t qualify for the reduced rate. The two-bedroom apartments would be $1,452 or $1,878, and the three-bedroom apartment would be $1,669 or $2,429.
Ms. Casey said those rates are expected to decrease slightly in 2018 with adjustments to the federal guidelines. Eligibility for renting the apartments will be awarded via lottery sometime next year if the project wins planning approval and secures the federal funding to proceed.
Once built, the apartments would be owned and operated by the Housing Authority.
Ms. Casey said that the plan is for the property to have a “net zero” carbon footprint, with all of the energy needs for the property coming from solar panels atop the buildings and above parking spaces adjacent to each unit, which will double as a carport-like protection from the elements for the residents.
on Oct 24, 2017