Failing To Plan Is Planning To Fail

An issue for decades, affordable housing for local residents on the South Fork, has reached crisis proportions. The crisis has accelerated in the wake of the pandemic. The value of real estate sales tripled between 2019 and 2021. High prices and low inventory has put housing beyond the reach of more and more local residents.

The housing crisis is not unique to the South Fork — it is a national issue. Housing costs are part of an affordability problem that has upended politics across the nation. Middle class Americans who get up every morning and go to work in search of the American dream find it difficult to make ends meet, let alone get ahead. Housing has been at the crux of the problem.

While it may be a national issue, it seems even worse on the South Fork. Factors such as our proximity to New York City, the financial center of the world, and our attractive community character have created a unique housing market on the South Fork.

In addition, the ability to work remotely has allowed people in the business and financial sector to work from anywhere. Why not set up home base in one of the most beautiful places on Earth?

The result has been a real estate market where those with high incomes desiring a second home on the South Fork can easily out-compete local families seeking a first home for a finite inventory of housing stock.

The second-home industry has created a robust economy for our region. However, it has not been without its downside, including some of the highest housing costs in the nation. Will the families who built the South Fork be able to stay and enjoy it?

Every difficult issue we face on the South Fork is related to housing. Increased traffic congestion is exacerbated by workers who cannot live here and travel from the west to their jobs. Staffing shortages for local businesses, schools and health care can all be traced to the lack of housing, as can the lack of volunteers for our local fire and ambulance services.

Housing affects everything.

In 2021, I passed legislation in Albany enabling the five East End towns to each create a Community Housing Fund. This law gave each town a new tool to tackle the housing crisis. In summary, each town was permitted to add a half percent to the existing 2 percent Community Preservation Fund real estate transfer tax to be used exclusively for community housing.

In 2022, voters in East Hampton, Shelter Island, Southold and Southampton towns approved referendums to implement the CHF. Southampton collects about $1 million in CHF revenue each month, and East Hampton about half of that.

While this is a valuable tool, it is just that: a tool. Even the most skilled carpenter needs a plan if you are going to build a house. Failing to plan is planning to fail.

A recent story in this newspaper highlights that there is still much work to do if we are going to craft a successful plan. That story focused on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs. The process is so cumbersome, time consuming and expensive that it is a disincentive to the average homeowner. This leaves the average resident with the sense that local government doesn’t care about them or solving the housing crisis.

Below are some suggestions that could be part of a plan to improve housing affordability on the South Fork.

• Convene a Peconic Bay Housing Summit.

While land use is a home rule power that must be jealously guarded, the five towns are a region, and housing is a regional problem. Our local governments should join together to formulate a strategy to cooperate to solve the housing crisis, as they did with the Peconic Estuary.

• Community Housing Trust.

Nationally, the communities that have had the most success in tackling the housing crisis have created a not-for-profit community housing trust. We need the housing equivalent of the Peconic Land Trust.

Conservation efforts have been successful on the South Fork because there has always been a public/private partnership between government and organizations. Across the nation, housing trusts are assisting government to create new housing opportunities.

• Streamline the ADU process.

No one initiative could increase housing stock faster than ADUs. The impediments in the process need to be identified and eliminated. This can be done without adversely impacting community character.

• Development Rights Bank.

Under the CPF law, the development rights to more than 13,000 acres of land have been acquired. The CPF law allows the town to bank these rights for use in community housing, unless they have been expressly extinguished by the towns.

These development rights could be used to provide for ADUs and other community housing opportunities. However, this is seldom the case.

• Infrastructure.

Water and sewer infrastructure is often an impediment to community housing. Local government can marry CPF water quality funds or the new County Water Quality Infrastructure fund to foster new community housing opportunities.

There are creative ideas being implemented all across the country. Let’s look and see what has worked elsewhere and what might work here.

More to come.