Sag Harbor Village Seeking To Encourage More Accessory Apartments

Last year, as part of a broader effort to promote more affordable housing, the Sag Harbor Village Board adopted a measure making it easier for residents to create accessory apartments on properties zoned for single-family houses.

So far, only five people have filed applications to do so, and as part of an effort to renew its broader push for affordable housing, the Village Board wants to tweak the code to reduce the required size of those apartments from a minimum of 500 square feet to 280 square feet. A maximum size of 600 square feet would remain in place.

A hearing on the measure will take place when the board holds its next meeting, at 6 p.m. on October 12.

“We have to make it appealing for people to do it,” Mayor Tom Gardella said. “If they want to create an apartment for a young person or for an elderly person who wants to stay in their home, we should be there to assist them.”

Gardella said the board would continue to work on other affordable housing legislation with the goal of having something to present to the public by the end of the year.

He added that he did not foresee the board trying to resurrect a local law making it easier to build affordable apartments in the business and office districts that was tossed out by a state court last fall.

“We are looking at a 2.2-square-mile village,” he said. “We are not going to be able to solve the entire affordable housing problem.”

A committee that includes Trustee Jeanne Kane, Trustee Ed Haye, Building Inspector Chris Talbot and Village Attorney Elizabeth Vail has been reviewing various parts of the code, looking for ways to clarify it and make sure different sections do not conflict with one another.

The decision to review the size requirements for affordable accessory apartments as well as clarify if homeowners would be allowed to rent them to family members came out of that committee’s deliberations.

“Given that affordable housing is one of our major goals,” Kane said, “we want to accomplish something on it instead of just talking about it.”

She noted that on smaller lots, requiring a minimum of 500 square feet for an accessory apartment, either as part of the main house or as a detached unit, would be too large.

“We have received feedback that we should consider reducing the minimum size of ADUs,” or accessory dwelling units, added Haye. “We recognize that there are many existing accessory apartments throughout the village,” he said, noting that the village wants to bring those existing apartments into compliance with the safety provisions of a new rental registry it plans to adopt for 2024 and beyond.

Encouraging accessory apartments “is consistent with planning studies that have been done” by the village, he said.

Talbot said the 280-square-foot figure was used because that is approximately the size of a one-car garage that could be converted to a detached apartment.

The committee agreed to reduce the minimum size required after seeing renderings done by Val Florio, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, who is also an architect, that showed that a modest, one-bedroom apartment, with a bathroom and kitchenette, could be created in that amount of space.

Another tweak to the code would reduce the maximum size of an accessory apartment that is attached to a house from 50 percent of the total floor area to only 40 percent, with the same maximum of 600 square feet remaining in place.

Village officials said the new size guidelines would continue to meet both state building code as well as Suffolk County Department of Health Services standards.