Concerning Data About Affordable Housing Development's Potential To Strain Services in Southampton

When Southampton Town Councilwoman Cynthia McNamara first learned of the proposed 60-unit affordable housing development just outside Southampton Village, now called Liberty Gardens, she felt that planned access onto congested County Road 39 was worrisome.

When the developer, Concern Housing Inc., submitted an environmental study in furtherance of a needed zone change from the Town Board, she read it and, gesturing to the massive tome and files left by her predecessor on the Town Board, Julie Lofstad, said this week, “I was looking for something redeeming, but what I got was more questions.”

Particularly concerning, she said, was the potential strain that 60 more residential units could have on already short-staffed local police and ambulance services.

The lawmaker emphasized that she supports the creation of affordable housing and knows of the need townwide. But, she emphasized, “We don’t have the services.”

“They offered to take me on a tour of their facilities,”she said. “But, it’s, like, if I invite you to a party on Saturday night, my house is going to be spotless. But if you show up on a Tuesday and knock on the door …”

In an effort to gauge the volume of services the development might need, McNamara asked for police call data for two up-island developments run by the nonprofit housing organization. “I felt I owe it to the taxpayers to show up on a Tuesday,” she said.

However, one of the pair — that the company declined to identify out of concern that its residents would be stigmatized — is licensed to accommodate people with mental illness, so the volume of emergency calls, especially those necessitating transportation for psychiatric evaluation, wouldn’t match what could be expected at Liberty Gardens.

Data from the second development, Liberty Landing in Lake Ronkonkoma, might. There, first responders were called an average of 84 times per year since 2019. Details about the nature of the calls, or how serious they were, were not listed in the data. But, serious or not, once called, responders have to respond.

Can local cops and volunteer ambulance corps handle a potential increase?

The required environmental report, known as the draft environmental impact statement, prepared by the consulting firm Nelson Pope Voorhis, notes that the housing would be built on land that’s currently vacant. It acknowledges there will likely be a higher volume of calls, and more frequent calls to a place that’s occupied compared to a vacant parcel of land.

To help cover the additional cost, the DEIS proposes an annual tax allocation to the local police department of $4,532, which would increase by 2 percent every year.

Southampton Town Police Captain James Kiernan said he had not studied the proposal, when reached for comment. However, he said that anytime there’s a significant increase in the population of a sector, there can be an increase in need for police services.

County Road 39 is one of the busiest roads in town, he noted. “I certainly think 60 units in one shot in an already busy sector is going to have an impact.”

Donna Kreymborg, the chairwoman of the board of Southampton Volunteer Ambulance, was less circumspect in her response to the plan. Speaking to the current high accident rate on the road, she said, “I cannot imagine a development like this exiting and entering onto County Road 39.”

Struggling now to staff up the corps, she predicts that once the numbers are finalized, the number of calls for this past summer will break records. There were more calls and fewer volunteers to answer them. She said her own responses to ambulance calls have decreased, due to difficulties navigating traffic jams. Calls that once took 40 minutes can now stretch to three hours, and many volunteers can’t leave their jobs for that long, to respond.

Kreymborg said she is “fearful” every time members of her company have to respond to accidents on County Road 39, something she said can happen three or four times a week. She’s fearful for the safety of volunteers as cars whiz past a scene, and she’s fearful about the victim in their care. And thirdly, she worries about an ambulance getting stuck in the road’s bumper-to-bumper gridlock, with precious minutes of critical time wasted. The development, she concluded, would be a strain on their services.

She characterized a proposed tax allocation of $653 per year to the ambulance company as “laughable.”

Asked to respond to the worry that the development would strain services, Ralph Fasano, executive director of Concern Housing, pointed out via email that 30 of the units are reserved for veterans: “I think it is wrong to deny people who served our country the housing that they need based on a theory that their service and transportation needs might be expensive.”

Interviewed on September 27, he responded to the concern about services and traffic issues with a rhetorical question: “Do we want to avoid all that and just forget about affordable housing?”

While McNamara and Kreymborg both acknowledged the need for and support of the creation of affordable housing, they mentioned, as have opponents, that residents of the dwellings will be chosen by lottery, and the funding used requires the lottery to be open to all residents of Suffolk County. The fear is that the development will bring more people to live in a town some feel is already overcrowded.

Fair housing law and state funding guidelines don’t permit Concern to restrict the units to local applicants. But, Fasano said, the “vast majority” of residents in Concern’s other developments come from the community where they’re built. The organization markets the available units “intensely” in the communities where they are constructed. That’s how they end up serving locals.

To the notion of an influx of out-of-towners, he asked, who would want to live in a place where they didn’t work? Additionally, he made note of the area’s hiring crisis that’s driven by the lack of affordable housing — Liberty Gardens could help meet the need for more workers.

“It’s not the worst thing in the world if people want to live and work in Southampton. Isn’t there a worker shortage as we speak?” he asked.

Speaking to the traffic apprehension, he commented, “Every site we choose, it’s the wrong location.”

Once other developments have been built, however, the traffic worry dissipates, and neighbors realize the sites can be “so, so quiet,” Fasano said. “The vision of this enormous amount of traffic doesn’t materialize.”

McNamara bemoaned the fact that the Town Board didn’t have a dedicated work session with Fasano to discuss her questions and concerns, as well as those that have been brought to her by the community, before a public hearing was scheduled.

The DEIS, plus the code change the project would need to increase density, will be the subject of a public hearing on the night of October 25. The councilwoman said she’ll be asking her questions then.