Panelists Stress Need for Community Housing Funds at Express Sessions Discussion

At the top of the most recent Express Sessions event, moderator Joseph P. Shaw, the executive editor of The Express News Group, pointed out that just about every one of the panel discussions the group hosts winds up focusing on the need for more affordable housing across the East End.

On Friday, October 14, those who attended the latest session, which was held at Union Burger in Southampton and dedicated to the Community Housing Fund that will appear as Proposition 3 on next month’s ballot, learned why that is.

Kara Bak, the Southampton Town housing director, said her office is inundated with calls from people who have found jobs in town and need a place to live and those who have lost the once-affordable apartments or houses they had been renting. Asked how many rental units are available, she replied, “Not enough, I can tell you that.”

She said she had recently spoken to a landlord who wanted to rent a one-bedroom apartment for $5,000 per month. Asked by Shaw if he would be able to find a tenant able to pay that price, she replied, “He seems to think so.”

The difficulty of finding a place to live was brought home by Sheri Pasquarella, the executive director of The Church gallery and performance space in Sag Harbor. She said she had recently come to the East End from Manhattan.

“The longest part of my negotiations was over my concern about finding housing,” she said. “I was terrified of the prospect of having to move every six months.”

She said with the help of her employers, Eric Fischl and April Gornik, she and her wife were able to find a “stable” one-year lease, but her longer term prospects remain cloudy.

The crisis has been made more dire, Bak said, because the median house price — the price at which half of all sales are above and half below — has reached $1.6 million in Southampton, and there is simply no longer any meaningful inventory available for less than $1 million.

“This is a problem for our economy, and it’s really a problem for our communities as well,” said East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc. “The fabric of our community is being eroded,” he said, as more locals are forced to move away.

Van Scoyoc sat on the panel with Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman; State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.; Curtis Highsmith, the director of the Southampton Town Housing Authority; and Michael Daly, a leader of the housing advocacy group East End YIMBY.

“It’s definitely gotten worse,” added Schneiderman of the housing shortage, “and it’s hard to imagine it being worse because it has been bad for 20, 30 years.”

With interest rates spiking upward to about 7 percent for a 30-year mortgage as the Federal Reserve tries to get a handle on stubbornly high inflation, Schneiderman said buyers who earlier might have been able to scrape together enough money to buy a house are now simply shut out of the market.

The panelists agreed that if voters in both towns approve the creation of community housing funds, which would add a half-percent tax to most real estate transactions to be earmarked for affordable housing initiatives, a dent could be made in the housing shortage.

“The towns have done an outstanding job. It’s just not enough,” said Thiele of current efforts to tackle the problem. He added that even with a Community Housing Fund, it would be impossible for the towns to build their way out of the housing shortage, and they would have to make use of some of the innovative tools included in the state-enabling legislation, such as down payment assistance or shared equity programs for first-time buyers, that focuses on making existing stock more attainable.

For those who are thinking of voting against the referendums, which will also be on the ballot in Shelter Island and Southold towns, Thiele urged them to ask themselves: “Do you think the status quo is working?”

Highsmith, who described the housing shortage as a national issue, said having local funds available would help the housing authority leverage state and federal money in pursuing developments. He said it was important to explain that affordable housing means housing for middle-class people, who make decent wages but can’t afford to buy a house here.

Daly said he was confident that enough people are aware of the problem to help pass the referendum. “All of a sudden, when it’s tough to get a lobster salad in Sagaponack, it’s, ‘Oh, you guys have to do something about affordable housing,’” he said.

Kidding aside, he said being unable to afford a place to live is damaging to one’s psyche. “There are people who are now living in vehicles,” he said. “And they aren’t telling you. It’s uncomfortable. People are embarrassed to come out and say, ‘I can’t find a place to live. I don’t make enough money.’”

Thiele added that it was important for advocates to encourage people to vote for the legislation, which, he added, won’t necessarily be an easy sell.

“Everyone I know wants to live next to a nature preserve or a park or a historic community,” he said, speaking of the overwhelming support for the earlier Community Preservation Fund, which focused on raising money for open space and farmland. “Not everyone wants to live next to affordable housing.”

Shaw asked the panelists to address a number of concerns people might have about affordable housing. Thiele dismissed the notion that the tax would harm the real estate market, saying the same argument was made when the 2 percent CPF was adopted more than two decades ago. “Anyone who thinks the real estate industry on the East End is in a deep recession, raise your hand,” he said.

Highsmith was asked to address the concern that providing affordable housing will simply draw outsiders from up-island and New York City, and farther, who want to live on the East End.

“It just doesn’t happen,” he said, adding that he had tracked applications for the housing authority’s developments and only about 8 percent of those who applied came from Brookhaven and west. Of those, he added, most were people “who lived here and are now moving back home.” He said people want to live near where they work and near family and friends. Those stats hold, he said, for other towns in Suffolk County.

Van Scoyoc said it was untrue that the housing fund would be used only to provide low-income Section 8 type housing. “This is housing that is needed for middle-class people who are established in the community,” he said, adding that if someone moved to East Hampton to take a regular job, they would find themselves “in jeopardy if they don’t already have a home.”

Thiele added that to qualify, a household of one or two people could have an annual income of up to $174,000. A household of three or four people could make up to $203,000.

Schneiderman said the town would likely focus its building efforts east of the canal, citing two proposed projects, one adjacent to the Full Gospel Church on County Road 39 in Southampton and one at the Bridgehampton Senior Center.

Panelists agreed that developments would be created to remain affordable in perpetuity, something that was not always the case in earlier affordable housing efforts.

Schneiderman added that the fund would allow the town to lend money to homeowners to renovate their houses to provide affordable apartments or help buyers afford their own homes.

“It would give us at the local level the tools we need to get more of these things off the ground,” he said.

Daly rejected the idea that more affordable housing would have negative impacts on school districts or otherwise harm community character, saying enrollment is declining in most local districts because families are moving out. Highsmith agreed, saying the impact is “not as grand, it’s not as big as we may assume it will be.”

Daly added that it was important to recognize that “low income” is a term that could be applied to many working people on the East End. “So many of the people who fill the important infrastructure roles in our community are now low-income people,” he said, “and this is who we need to create housing for.”

But the panelists agreed, even if the referendums pass by broad margins, it will take time to have an impact because it will take time to accrue funds and come up with solutions.

“I don’t think you are going to see a sudden shift,” Schneiderman said. But he said having money coming in would allow the town to start extending loans to senior citizens to allow them to carve out apartments in single-family homes or help buyers finance their houses.

And Thiele said the money would allow the towns to pursue public-private partnerships with school districts, hospitals and other major employers on larger developments.