Affordable Housing Resale Bought By Southampton Educators

The Town of Southampton bought an affordable condominium in North Sea more than two years ago so that it could be sold again to a qualifying family. That plan was finally realized recently when two Southampton School District employees purchased the condo at the Courtyards of Southampton, a 50-unit complex completed in 2008, where 14 units were required to be sold for below market rate.

Married in August 2018, Jessica and Daniel Gomez met in 2015 as they both started their jobs with the school district. “She sat behind me on orientation day,” Mr. Gomez said as they sat at their dining room table this month.

Ms. Gomez, 29, is an elementary school teacher working in the district’s dual language program, which educates both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers in both languages, and is an English as a second language, or ESL, teacher. Mr. Gomez, 28, is an ESL teacher assistant at the high school.

“They’re similar in the aspect that we both serve the same community of kids,” Ms. Gomez said of their jobs. The dual language program is designed to give equal weight to both English and Spanish, so students are fluent in both languages when they graduate.

“Jessica does actual lesson planning,” Mr. Gomez said. “I help teachers execute their lesson plans, and provide support in translating.”

Mr. Gomez grew up in Southampton and attended Tuckahoe School and Southampton High School, while Ms. Gomez grew up in Lindenhurst and said she didn’t know Southampton existed before the job opportunity came up.

“I was looking for many years for a teaching job, and I would wake up every day and apply for whatever I could that I was certified in,” Ms. Gomez said. “And then I got a call from Southampton that they had an opening. I feel like that just changed everything, because once I moved out here, I really got to have my career.”

She earned a bachelor’s degree in childhood education with an extension in special education from Dowling College in Oakdale, and then a master’s degree in literary and teaching English to speakers of other languages from St. John’s University, also in Oakdale.

Mr. Gomez has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stony Brook University, and he is currently attending Suffolk County Community College one night a week to fulfill U.S. history prerequisites for a master’s degree in social studies for grades five to 12. He said he pursued economics because he was interested in a career in the financial sector, but he still had an inkling to teach and was a tutor in college. “If I was able to educate someone or help them understand, it was a good feeling for me,” he said. “But it took me a while to go back for my master’s, because I wanted to be sure this is what I wanted to do.”

He finds the work he does meaningful, he said, and he often comes home and shares with his wife stories of the kids he works with and proud moments he’s had. “I feel, at the end of the day, I am doing something worthwhile.”

Between their day jobs, going to school and involvement in after-school programs, they have found time to paint the walls of their new home white, and next they plan to rip out the carpeting and put down laminate flooring. The condo has two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It includes an open kitchen and dining area, a living room, a balcony, and a laundry room and additional storage space in the basement. The condo complex also offers a community pool and two playgrounds.

The complex, located off Majors Path, is tricky to find for those who haven’t been there before. But Mr. Gomez is very familiar with it: His family friends, the McGays, have lived there since winning a spot in the housing lottery that was held for the 14 affordable units when they were first built.

“I’ve been coming here since I was a teenager, so it’s ironic that I ended up here, too,” he said.

They moved in at the end of October. Previously, they were living in Speonk while they saved up money. “We were trying to make the transition from renting to being homeowners,” Ms. Gomez said. “We were waiting for the right opportunity to come up.”

Now, they live just 10 minutes from their jobs.

“And we’re in such a fantastic community, and that’s really the most important thing,” Ms. Gomez said.

She said she always had the goal to be a homeowner. “I just wanted a place that was mine that I could build on and then grow and have a husband, have a family. It was just an important step that I wanted to achieve.”

“I wanted the stability,” Mr. Gomez added, “because having a two-year lease on your rental is a little stressful. Moving is stressful. Setting up a new place is stressful. So finding that one place that we can call home comes with a great sigh of relief that we don’t have to move anytime soon. We can paint the way we want to paint. We can set it up without having to ask the landlord or anything like that.”

“Daniel and I do a lot of volunteer work around here,” Ms. Gomez said, “so being in a place where we can also connect with the community was important too.”

While they would like to do some traveling before they start having kids, children were a consideration when they purchased the condo.

“It was important for us to find a community that we could raise a family in that had great schools, which we do — we have amazing schools in Southampton — great teachers who really care about the kids, and also the diversity here,” Ms. Gomez said. “It’s great that there are so many different people here.”

Mr. Gomez added: “I feel like I had a great childhood growing up here, so I would like my kids to do the same. Southampton is one of only two public schools here on Long Island that offers dual language programs, which is a huge benefit.”

The Gomezes originally learned of the affordable condo in March. To qualify, they attended free first-time homebuyer counseling with the Long Island Housing Partnership, a nonprofit based in Hauppauge that was established in 1988 to provide affordable housing opportunities. There, they met with housing counselor Marie Povinelli to discuss the process to qualify for a mortgage and to ensure they could keep up with payments.

“It was really helpful to have somebody there walking you through it, as opposed to reading it by yourself,” Ms. Gomez said. “She was able to answer a lot of questions there.”

During a phone interview last week, Ms. Povinelli and LIHP President and CEO Peter Elkowitz explained the services provided.

“We do an affordability schedule to show them how the bank qualifies them for a mortgage and what they can afford,” Ms. Povinelli said.

LIHP can also help prospective buyers recognize and address negative marks on their credit reports.

“Most people may not realize that they have things on their credit report that they need to clear up,” Mr. Elkowitz said.

LIHP explains what grants and tax exemptions may be available to buyers, such as veterans and seniors exemptions, and what down payment and closing costs assistance they may be eligible for.

Diana Weir, Southampton Town’s director of housing & community development, said Monday that the town had the right of first refusal when the previous owner decided to sell the condo. There were covenants on the unit when it originally sold to ensure it would remain affordable in perpetuity. The owner was able to sell the unit for only the original cost, plus inflation. That worked out to about $355,000. When the town turned around to sell it again, the price tag remained the same.

At market rate, the condo would have sold for $600,000, Ms. Weir said.

In order to qualify, applicants’ household income could be no more than 130 percent of the area median income, or AMI, she said. As defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the AMI in Nassau and Suffolk counties for a couple in 2019 is $99,200, and 130 percent of that is $128,950.

Applicants also need to qualify for a mortgage, which is more difficult when purchasing a condo, Ms. Weir noted. Mortgage brokers look not only at the monthly mortgage payment and taxes, but the condo common fees as well, such as the maintenance of the complex’s roads, landscape and shared facilities.

The town went through about a dozen applicants before finding the Gomezes, Ms. Weir said. “They’re a great young couple, so we’re very excited.”

As future affordable housing resales come up — and there are more on the horizon, as soon as January — they will be offered via lottery, Ms. Weir said, and they will be advertised to the town’s affordable housing waiting list, which has grown from 500 to 1,300 since she took her post in 2017.