Letters

So many talk about “keeping things the way they are. Don’t change our world. We like it just the way it is.” I remember my grandparents saying that in 1967. But, things have changed, haven’t they? With or without them.

According to AARP’s “Rethink Housing”: “By 2030, one in five people in the United States will be age 65 or over. And by 2035, older adults are projected to outnumber children for the first time ever. America’s current housing stock doesn’t fit a rapidly aging population. In 2017, more than 19 million older adults were living in housing that didn’t provide them with the best opportunity to live independently, and only about 1 percent of the nation’s present housing is equipped to meet their needs.”

But let’s keep things exactly the way they are, right?

Housing has been slow to respond to the needs of changing living arrangements. Deeply rooted zoning regulations have long favored the standard single-family home and make it difficult for alternatives to materialize. The result is a mismatch between the nation’s households and its housing.

The United States is changing … with or without us. Today, 48 percent of adults are single and 27 percent of children live with a single parent. That old worldview of a house with a picket fence and a yard is fading. Especially since many of our small homes with picket fences are being consumed by the luxury real estate market, being torn down and replaced with McMansions and tall hedges.

Our zoning is outdated and doesn’t reflect the way people are living today. Many young people want apartments, condos and easy-to-maintain properties. Many aging people want to get out from under property maintenance responsibilities and costs but have nowhere to go if they want to stay in their communities.

That’s because we’ve fought nearly every senior housing proposal that has been brought before us over the last 30 years. Didn’t want to be around old people? Welcome to our own reality, folks.

I bought my house in North Haven almost 20 years ago, a modest ranch that I still enjoy today. I figured that when I retired, I would sell my home to a family and move to an apartment in Sag Harbor. But lawsuits and local opposition to affordable housing have pretty much dashed that dream for me. Guess I’ll be either barricaded in this house or end up moving to Florida or the Carolinas, like many other local residents who can’t find a place to live out their years here.

We make our beds. Now we get to lie in them.

Michael Daly

East End YIMBY

Sag Harbor