Letters

Thank you, Cynthia McNamara — finally, a voice of reason [“Concerning Data About Affordable Housing Development’s Potential To Strain Services in Southampton,” 27east.com, September 28]. This “Liberty Gardens” project will absolutely put stress on our community.

We have been rejecting this proposal for over four years, to deaf ears. To rezone 130 County Road 39 from single-family to multifamily and increase the density to 60 units is much too much. I don’t believe it will stop there either — this is only a plan for half the property. Once in the door …

Also, this is being touted as affordable housing — but for whom? This is federally funded low-income housing. There is a possibility that no one from Southampton Town or Suffolk County or New York will reside in these. This is a lottery based on low income throughout the United States.

The possibility that these winners will become part of our workforce is questionable. This is not workforce housing for the residents of our town — for our teachers, our hospital workers or clerks at our shops. This is not workforce housing — this is strain and drain housing. This will put a strain on our police, ambulances and our roads, especially County Road 39, which we all know is extremely congested and dangerous. A small number of units are for veterans, but, again, they may not be from New York, let alone Southampton.

I’d like to quote Jay Schneiderman from an interview, speaking about Hampton Bays [“Q&A: Jay Schneiderman Talks About Hampton Bays and How the Conversation Will Go From Here,” 27east.com, September 12]: “We have to engage the community in planning for its own future. It can’t be a sort of developer-driven plan that we then try to sell to the community. It’s got to be a community-driven plan that we sell to the developer. So the community has to figure out what it wants.”

The community has always known what it wants, and has never been provided: affordable housing for its residents, not a developer-driven, federally funded scheme that increases density in the worst possible spot, with zero benefit to our community, only bringing stress.

Margaret DeCarlo

Southampton