Potential Solutions To East End Housing Woes Presented At East Hampton Forum

The East Hampton School District is struggling to hire and retain teachers, and ongoing traffic woes and the COVID-19 pandemic are accelerating an already rapidly rising real estate floor.

Local affordable housing is at the crux of the issue — and Montauk resident Jay Levine believes he might have a solution.

The idea, presented at East Hampton High School during a forum on the topic Tuesday night, piggybacks on one that the member of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Joint Advisory Committee advanced earlier this year.

Landed, a company founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 2015, helps educators, health care workers and first responders live in expensive cities. Landed’s down payment program invests alongside employees to help them reach a 20 percent down payment, funding up to $80,000 per household, and coming in the form of an equity investment. That means that homebuyers share in a portion of the gain — or loss, if any — of the value of the home once the partnership is ended, typically upon sale or refinance.

Levine said a similar program locally could prove beneficial. He asked members of the district also to reconsider salaries, due to the fact that most teachers are drowning in student loan debt and can’t find a way to get ahead.

According to results from the National Education Association’s 2020 survey of instructors working in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and in higher education institutions, 65 percent of educators under the age of 36 have student loan debt, and 42 percent of those have student loan debt in excess of $65,000. Black educators carry an average student loan debt of nearly $72,000. Sixty percent of those surveyed with student loan debt also indicate that their bills precludes them from saving money for things like buying a house.

The Board of Education was intrigued by Levine’s idea, and others. Superintendent Adam Fine said nothing is too far out of the box when discussing effective solutions.

“If the current state of affairs continues to exist, we will not be able to fill key positions in our schools,” he said. “We all know the issues. In some ways, this has been the case for many years, but the pandemic has decreased the number of homes available. And if you try to find a house 30 miles away in the Town of Brookhaven, you’re hit with huge property taxes. This is a conundrum.”

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. noted that he has crafted “sister legislation” to the Community Preservation Fund, monies generated by a 2 percent tax on real estate transfers and used to purchase and preserve open space, recreational and historic properties and to aid in water quality improvements. Under the legislation, a half percent would be added to the existing 2 percent real estate transfer tax and used to create a Community Housing Fund that would fund affordable housing efforts of all kinds.

The fund could offer financial assistance to first-time homebuyers. Each East End town would be able to create a fund that could cover up to 50 percent of a home’s purchase price and would allow towns to underwrite the production of housing for sale or rent. The money could also be used for rehabbing buildings, providing housing counseling and purchasing existing housing to turn around for sale or rent — all ideas the East Hampton School Board had recently considered to be viable options.

“We want to achieve the goal of affordable housing, and we know we’re not the only employer in the town having difficulty,” board member Jackie Lowey said. “But we look at this as an existential crisis that we’re facing in our building to educate our kids of the future.”

Assemblyman Thiele commended the School Board and administration for facing this issue head-on.

“This could be one of the bigger tools in the toolbox,” he said of his legislation, which passed in both houses of the State Legislature in June and was signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in October. Voters in the five East End towns will weigh in on whether to increase the transfer tax next November, meaning monies could be available as early as 2023.

“This money comes from our families and kids,” board President J.P. Foster said, “and I want to invest it in our families and kids.”

Tom Ruhle, director of housing for the town and an East Hampton graduate, threw out the idea of building apartments over parking garages. His proposal comes after seeing something similar, he said — stores on top of parking garages in Freeport, Maine.

“We’re suffering,” said board member John Ryan Sr., adding that he’s interested in the district getting into the rental business. “We want to hire the best, but if they don’t live out here, they’re not coming. Why would they live out here when they can get a job back in their hometown? And away they go. We just lost a great high school principal that way. So maybe we can attract them with this idea of our own housing.”

East Hampton Teachers’ Association President Joseph Sanicola said he is afraid this type of housing could lead to more forced turnover, as families expand if they still can’t find permanent places to relocate. He said he believes the South Fork Commuter Connection service is also part of the solution.

Members of the local real estate community, Habitat for Humanity of Suffolk and others came forward on November 30 to present ideas and offer support.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said he remembers when he and his wife, newly married, were trying to find a home in the area over 30 years ago, but could only afford a winter rental. He was in the carpentry industry at the time, and his wife, Marilyn, was an educator in the district. The pair moved over seven times in two and a half years.

“It was difficult then, and I can only think it’s nearly impossible now,” Van Scoyoc said. “Every single available house out here is occupied. This is most important issue that we’re facing as a town right now, along with coastal erosion and sea level rise. But to me, this one has the potential for the greatest negative impacts on our town.”