Q&A: Curtis Highsmith Jr. On The High Cost Of Failing To Provide Affordable Housing For Our Kids

On Friday, Curtis Highsmith Jr.’s car was in the parking lot of Sandy Hollow, a complex of affordable housing in Tuckahoe.

It was one of the few.

Highsmith, the executive director of the Southampton Housing Authority, which created the 28-unit Sandy Hollow, was working on a laptop in its community room. But most of the residents were elsewhere — working.

More than anything, that was satisfying to Highsmith, and a clear demonstration of not only the need for housing for working families in Southampton Town, but how successful the project has been in meeting that need for a precious few.

“I actually come here once a week and just work from here,” said Highsmith, who has been executive director since 2014 after years serving as a commissioner for the authority; he’s also currently a commissioner on the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission.

“You know something? When you create something, every once in a while, you like to go back and just take a look and see how it lives,” he said, noting that he does the same at Speonk Commons, a 38-unit affordable housing project completed not long ago.

“Every unit that we built, every house that we built — maybe I’m a stalker, but I like to go back and take a look, and see how people have created their own living space there. And it really brings into perspective what it is that I’m doing. We’re changing lives.

“Watching kids get off the school bus, watching parents get up and go to work every morning. And the parking lot is empty now, so everyone’s working. This is workforce housing. And you’re actually seeing it being fulfilled firsthand. I love it.”

Highsmith discussed the increasing attention paid to the issue of the region’s lack of affordable housing, culminating in an expected November vote in the five East End towns on a new Community Housing Fund initiative, which would use a transfer tax of 0.5 percent to support the creation of more housing opportunities, and other related issues via Zoom.

Q: Sandy Hollow and Speonk Commons — are both of those projects filled?

Yes.

Q: They’re 100 percent filled?

Filled with waiting lists. Yes. … 66 total units. Sandy Hollow has 28 units, Speonk has 38 units. So 66 total units. It decreased from our initial and original application.

But I think these are perfect examples. And I’m glad we were kind of the test study of what creating workforce and affordable [housing and bringing] moderate income, low to moderate income families into a community looks like.

It’s not the end of the world, as people during the application process would’ve pronounced. It’s not going to decrease and has not decreased anyone’s property values. If anything, it’s enhanced it.

It’s funny. I’ve had people who I speak with a lot in Sag Harbor, in East Hampton, who have to pass through Sandy Hollow, and never knew this was low-income [housing]. They’re, like, “Wait a minute. It’s not a condo complex?” Or, “What is that complex? We never knew.”

I brought them back here and drove them through. And they’re, like, “Wow, this doesn’t look like an affordable housing complex.”

Those are compliments to me, because it shows that we can definitely — through architecture, through vernacular, through making sure we had the best selection processes, to making sure the landscape is amazing — we can demonstrate that this can be done respectfully.

… People come through and they ask me, “I’m just wondering. Where is Sandy Hollow? I keep hearing about this place, Sandy Hollow. Where is it?” I said, “You probably passed it and didn’t know it was there.”

… It can be well done if we work together … Remember, both lots — this lot here was just a vacant lot, but Speonk was a blighted site. So to see what it used to look like, and I always do side by sides, and what we were able to do as a final result, I think we did a magnificent job, and these should be examples for other projects that happen down the road.

Q: Do you feel like we’re at a critical moment for action on affordable housing?

We’ve been at a critical moment for years. And that’s also demonstrated in our application process.

It’s funny when people say that the applicants are not going to come from Southampton. We’re getting our babies back home! We’re getting our people, our kids back in place, where they’ve been priced out of place for years.

It’s been a critical moment. People have had to leave and uproot their lives out of the community, out of the town, out of the state, just to find housing. They’ve had to reroute, and kind of regroup and recreate a new career in another location.

So I’ve been front stage for the stories and the details and the lives that been changed, because there just hasn’t been a significant amount of inventory in Southampton Town or surrounding communities. I hear the stories. I had the letters. I had the emails. I had the phone conversations. They’re part of who I am now, and the reason why we’re so passionate about continuing in this mission.

Q: You alluded to it a few minutes ago, that one of the big challenges with affordable housing is to get people past the knee-jerk reaction of opposition, moving them toward support. Obviously, projects that are done and successful help to do that. But, I mean, it’s a big ask to get over that hump, to where people become welcoming to the idea rather than to immediately feel like they are opposed to it. How do you get past that?

I’ll say this: A lot has happened since 2014, to the present, where people have changed. There is now this crescendo of community [members who] turned into advocates. They’re now very supportive of, and have shown up. And that’s the most important thing. There’ve always been supporters. They don’t always show up.

So now we have this new surge of community advocates who show up every meeting, who create their own vehicles for narratives to ensure that the truth is brought out, rather than the kind of conspiracy theories.

But, first things first, you know you’re never going to change the minds of some people. It’ll always be opposition. I don’t care if you want a lemonade stand in front of your yard, there’s always going to be opposition as to why that shouldn’t happen. So we have to take into consideration that you will never change some individuals’ minds.

But what you can start doing is start attacking some of the narratives that are tried or raised to counter affordable housing being built in certain communities. When they start making conversation or discussion about people coming — “They’re not really for our locals.” Well, that’s not truthful. There’s been no evidence of any process where people from outside of, I mean, even as far west as Brookhaven, have come in droves to the East End of Long Island.

… When I did the numbers and I did the calculations — because I really wanted this to become something that we would be able to base on fact and not on conspiracy — the fact is, not greater than 8 percent of the applicants came from west of Brookhaven Town. Less than 8 percent. And the majority of that 8 percent were applicants who moved out of the community and were coming back home.

People just don’t move where they don’t have family. People just don’t move where they don’t have a career or job. People just don’t uproot their lives and move to a location where they don’t have vested interest in that location, in that community. It just doesn’t happen.

So we’ve got to start attacking some of those scenarios. When we talk about overcrowding? And that there’ll be criminal elements in our community? If you want a housing complex, this is the kind of vehicle you really want. One that basically has oversight, that makes sure that there’s someone accountable to be called if there’s some activity happening in the complex. …

There will be overcrowding? Well, that doesn’t happen. The inspections happen on a regular basis. Individuals are recertified annually on a regular basis. Units are inspected annually just to ensure that they’re being managed and they’re being lived in properly.

So that’s the type of oversight you want. You want an agency or a specific community that makes sure that what we promise is what’s being delivered.

Q: Let’s pause for a second, because I think you hit on what I think has been the number one issue that’s been raised. And it’s raised over and over and over again with affordable housing. It’s the idea that if we create affordable housing here, because of the nature of the funding of affordable housing, you have to make it available to anyone. And the suggestion always is that it’s going to mean those houses will go to people that you don’t intend them to go to. It’s not going to benefit people who work here and live here. It’s bringing more people in from outside. In a resort community, there’s a certain amount of that that holds water — this is a very attractive community to move to. But I want to stress this: You’re saying that doesn’t happen.

Well, we’re comparing apples and oranges. The fair market, or real estate market, people choose to be here from a resort standpoint. It’s not that they have to. It’s just they choose to be here, and they can afford to do so. So that’s where you have your summer residents that come in droves. You have individuals who have summer homes here. It’s an entirely different market altogether.

When you’re uprooting, and you’re looking to create domiciles somewhere, to relocate somewhere, there needs to be a commonality or a reason or purpose for you to do so.

And from our examples, whether it be the lotteries for Sandy Hollow and Speonk, the lotteries for the single-family homes that we’ve built, the lotteries for the homes we’re doing currently with Habitat for Humanity, the applications don’t indicate that there’s this huge desire for people who don’t live currently, work currently, or have family currently here in Southampton … It’s just not the case.

… And during the screening process, you have to show that you have an existing job. So it just doesn’t happen. If someone is going to make an effort to move to another location, the first thing they do is they create a job search close to where they’re going to live. So like I say, we haven’t felt it. And we’ve had a number of lotteries that indicate that that’s just not the case.

Q: So you said you spend time at the Speonk project and at Sandy Hollow. Without divulging any privacy information, talk about the people who live in those two developments. Who are they? What do they do? Are they families? Are they individual people? What do you see?

I’ll tell you something, it’s funny you say that. I will be doing a promotion on “the face of affordable housing in the Hamptons.” Without divulging all their information, but to give you an idea of the different careers, the different locations, where they come from … We have librarians here, individuals who work for the town, individuals who are in the police department. As a matter of fact, at one of our locations, I tell the officer, “Drive your car into the lot and leave it there for a while.” And he does and it’s fine. I’m not saying that we need it, but it gives the vernacular to people in the street, well, that’s a location where there’s safety, there’s security.

It’s a diverse community. We have individuals who work for not-for-profits and school teachers.

And so when I actually complete this list in this promotion and I bring it out, I think it really will bring perspective of who we are really approaching …

But most of the individuals, when they hear affordable housing, the first they think of is, you just have a bunch of Section 8 applicants there who don’t work. That’s not the case. And I always ask individuals, come in our community, come in our development, drive through, you’ll see the parking lot empty during the day. You’ll see them start coming in during the evening. You start watching the kids come home from school. You see that this is a community.

And I want to start kind of shifting “projects,” as a “housing project,” into a “housing community” — because that’s what it is. It’s a part of its own interactive community. Everyone knows one another. You see everyone has their own personal space, and then community space where they can all interact, have their personal time, or have their community time with one another.

Q: Putting faces on anything, faces and names, where it’s no longer abstract — these are the people who are here — I think it can change the narrative, can’t it?

Yes. Yes. So we’re working hard on that. You will have it soon. And we want to do it by video.

Some want to do it. They want us to actually be very proactive. They’re very happy. I’m going to tell you, it never gets old. And I say it over and over again: The time that we start handing keys over, that’s probably tied with the lottery when they actually got their numbers — two of the most exciting and rewarding days of what we do and what I’ve done.

Once an individual gets their key and now it becomes real, they’re putting footprints in their own homes, and they’re bringing it and making it their own. I like knocking on doors and saying, “Look, you don’t have to let me in, but I just want to see how you made it yours.” And seeing where pictures, a picture of families on walls, and how people have their layout.

And it is funny, because when we’re drafting stuff and putting things together and architecturally looking at layouts, I have a perspective. I’m always thinking, well, the TV can go there. The couch is going there. That’s not necessarily what people do when they go in their home. But when you get in there, you say, “You know something? I didn’t think of that! Very good idea.” And I start stealing those ideas for the next project that we do.

Q: So with the Community Housing Fund, if it’s approved and creates a fairly steady stream of revenue for the town, how do you think it will best be used to address the crisis?

Well, I think one of the things I recognize now is that you can’t always put all your eggs in one basket. So I think that the funds should be done in various forms.

One, the obvious and the part that I believe this municipality has been trying to push forward, is for the accessory apartment — by which individuals could possibly create, retrofit and prepare accessory apartments on their own lot. I think there’s some zoning changes that may have to happen to make that more acceptable, reasonable and exciting for individuals to partake in.

For a first-time homebuyer, the down payment [assistance], that we could utilize this for.

Most of that [current] funding is from county and state, but it’s a very competitive process. So you’re competing with Patchogue, Brookhaven Town and Islip Town, and other townships, and then their local hamlets. … And a lot of that also is divvied up to agencies like Long Island Housing Partnership and Habitat for Humanity.

So when we’re trying to do our own individual thing, that pool of funding may not be available so readily for us. So this type of funding could be used in a way that the town allows for first-time homebuyers to have down payment assistance.

And it can afford the opportunity for even the acquisition of land. I’m telling you, my most difficult time right now is trying to find something viable to build on. And I’m competing against the market. So when I’m looking at a 2-acre lot, trust me, there’s a builder or developer out there who’s saying, “I want that lot, too. And I have more money than you.” And so I’m outbid.

Q: I’m guessing that Southampton Town also is competing against other communities for funding that can allow bigger projects, which means more money for the developer, and that puts you at a disadvantage as well?

Well, think about it. Our Sandy Hollow [and] Speonk [projects] had to actually be combined to be one project … in order for us to even compete in the New York State funding stream, we had to combine the two units together to make a total of 66 units. We won the largest award, which is odd. We won the largest award in that funding stream with the least amount of units.

… And the reason why is that the state recognized that it’s very difficult to build in the Hamptons. Very difficult to find land that’s affordable that we can purchase. We don’t get a lot of donation of property. There are few buildable lots that we could do at least a reasonable amount of housing on them. So we’re out there paying top dollar for smaller lots. And then we are forced to create fewer units because of the opposition.

… That was an amazing of a show of confidence and motivation by New York State to do so, because they didn’t have any reason to do it.

Q: You mentioned zoning and the role it plays. I know at the state level, there’s been a big push for communities to reexamine their zoning rules to try and address this issue. That’s going to be a tough sell in Southampton though, isn’t it? Because so much of the focus over the last 20, 30 years has been on not turning Southampton into a high-density suburban community.

Well, I’m going to respond two ways on that. There’s the argument that whenever there’s an affordable housing project, there’s a room full of people just trying to hinder that from happening. But when there’s a home being torn down, at 1,500 square feet, and rebuilt at 10,000 to 14,000 square feet, you don’t have the same energy. There may be a few, there may be a handful.

But I would think that the impact of that building, even the long-lasting impact, of that 15,000-to-20,000-square-foot home has more of a negative impact on the East End of Long Island than any of the affordable homes, affordable units, that we’re building here.

I think that sometimes when we look at zoning, we have to realize that most of zoning was created at a time when there was no growth. There were no people. We’ve outgrown our case in Long Island. So we have to now try our best to afford opportunity for what is here currently to be able to live here currently.

I say this all the time, and I’ll say it again, I’ll keep on saying it: I have individuals who left our community with last names that are on the streets that we drive through every single day! And they’re being forced out of their own town, their community, their legacy. They’re being drawn out of the state, because they can’t afford to live here.

… If we have a system that doesn’t allow itself to grow so that we can prepare ourselves for the growth that’s happening in our community, we’re going to have illegal housing. We’re going to have loss of talent and loss of community, loss of people who are part of the history and the nature of what the East End is.

We’ve got to stop doing that. We need to create more, as the right processes, as the right methods to create affordable housing. Write out the plan, write out the game plan, so that individuals can play by the [rules]. But if every time we have to go and have a political conversation — and that’s what it is, a political conversation — over the right of creating more additional affordable housing, before an open forum with individuals who have to play sort of the referee between … there’s no good or no evil, there’s opinion to opinion. It becomes a political process.

We know what happens when politics get involved. It makes the process longer.

We just recently purchased a 3.3-acre lot here in North Sea, down the road from Sandy Hollow. And now I’m trying to create a six-lot subdivision. That means I had to acquire the property at market rate. Now I have to go through the process of subdividing that lot. That’s the town, that’s the [Suffolk County] Health Department. Then I have to go to planning. Then I have to go to the ZBA. Then I have to come back to the Health Department for the final … There’s a linear process now that makes it non-affordable just to create affordable units — to end up with a net of six single-family lots.

Someone always tells me, “Well, build another Sandy Hollow.”

I’m not doing it. I love a war. I love a battle. I’m willing to do it. But some battles are not worth fighting for. And that’s just not worth fighting for. …

So I’m showing you how, just from a planning standpoint, just the pre-development to create the possibility of affordable housing is so expensive. So linear, so time consuming. I’ve got to a hold a note on that property. That’s more. It’s a longer time. The longer I hold that property, the more it’s costing me in terms of pre-development, and the less affordable at the end of all of this.

… And we don’t make any money on this. For the most part, we’re a housing authority. So this is our mandate. This is what we do. We’re not making millions of dollars on these projects. We’re making payroll.

Q: But there’s still a bottom line you have to hit.

There’s still a bottom line that it has to be met.

Q: And it sounds to me, maybe it’s pessimistic to say it, but it sounds like the opposition that you’ve faced in the past with these projects has taken a little bit of a toll: Sometimes the projects just aren’t worth that fight because they won’t bring enough of a return. But that stops a project before it ever starts.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It becomes a non-starter. Absolutely. Certain locations because of the amount of opposition stops the location. Because the assessment of the time it’s going to take to get zoning stops the process altogether. Because of the amount of money or amount of funding that it’s going to take to get the process going and the least amount of yield I’ll have out of the project stops the process.

So, yeah, all of those are … I mean, I think I get a call from either a developer, landowner, someone in the family who now has a lot, every week someone had a deal for me. Every single week. And if I was a multimillionaire, I’d probably be extremely wealthy right now if I had the means and resources.

The fact of the matter is, a lot of it I’ve had to turn away. And just say, “You know something? It’s going to take five years for that to happen. I’m holding a note for that to happen. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Q: We’re talking about putting faces on this issue. You spoke at a recent Express Sessions event on affordable housing about the fact that you did renovations on your own home in order to create space for your son to be able to live there, right? You did that yourself.

Yes.

So, basically, my son, who has a child in the Southampton School District, needed to remain in the community, remain in the area, so that he could be a father in the community for his child.

First things first, he could never live in anything I built. It would be a conflict of interest in him being in Sandy Hollow or Speonk, or anywhere here.

So it would have to be something else in the community available. And there’s just not. I get a phone call every day: “Can you find me a one-bedroom, a two-bedroom?” There’s nothing here. There’s nothing available. And when it becomes available, it’s gone within hours.

I personally had to create space so that my son had the ability to raise this child. We would have time to also spend time with our grandchild. But that’s not everyone’s ability or proficiency or capability of doing.

My daughter — I’m proud a dad, my chest is still big. She just graduated from Villanova. Go Cats! But she’s staying here for maybe a week or two, and going back to Philadelphia.

… She’s going back to Philadelphia. She’s going to find her own place. It’s discouraged our children from wanting to even stay here.

And that’s what bothers me. She’s a psych major. You’re losing the opportunity for, quite frankly, I think a very skilled psychologist or a psychiatrist in future, the next doctor, the next engineer, the next physician. All of the talent that we have, all our children, our youth, our babies, are leaving our community. They’ve lost the appetite to stay here for the fight of not finding any place. …

We are literally going to lose a lot of great talent to other communities, where we should have them here.