Affordable Housing Summit Tackles One of the East End’s Most Intractable Problems

The Long Island Housing Coalition brought together representatives from local and statewide advocacy organizations and community partners to address affordable housing issues on the East End on June 14 in Bridgehampton.

The event, which took place on the same day that activists gathered across the North and South Forks for the “No Kings” protests, served as a stark reminder that an area known for its conspicuous wealth is also home to an expanding underclass of seasonal workers and full-time residents who struggle with housing insecurity.

“The story of housing in the Hamptons is that at some point we’re gonna hit rock bottom – and I think that we’re almost there,” said Bonnie Cannon, executive director of the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center, which hosted the event. “Affordable housing has to be addressed if we’re going to thrive as a community.”

Attempting to make progress on what can at times seem like an intractable issue, the summit included representatives from the Southampton Housing Authority, the Shinnecock Nation Housing Project, Windmill Housing in East Hampton, Community Development Long Island, East End YIMBY, ERASE Racism and both the Southampton and East Hampton union free school districts.

Also featured was a keynote presentation by Steve Rosenberg, co-convener of the Hudson Valley Alliance For Housing & Conservation.

Founded in 2022 and currently composed of 16 member organizations, the Alliance is a collaboration of land trusts and affordable housing organizations. The organization has already seen its share of successes, which is presumably why Rosenberg was invited to address his downstate neighbors.

In his presentation, Rosenberg pointed out that the Hudson Valley, which includes popular tourist destinations and second-home enclaves like Rhinebeck, Beacon and Cold Spring, has a lot in common with the East End, particularly in terms of income equality, a dearth of affordable housing and a community commitment to the preservation of its natural resources.

“Healthy communities need abundant, affordable housing and protected land that supplies us with clean water and food production and climate resilience,” he observed. “But all too often, the two are seen as either mutually exclusive, just completely separate, or worst case, opposed to one another.”

Rosenberg stressed that at its core, his organization functions as a consensus-builder. He noted that when it comes to affordable housing development, seemingly competing stakeholders, such as housing advocates and land conservationists, often have much more in common than they realize.

By bringing together disparate groups that often develop their projects (and apply for state or federal grant money) separately, Rosenberg pointed to a number of real-world successes his organization has helped facilitate.

For example, he cited a project in the Hudson Valley where two land trusts and one of the regional affordable housing groups affiliated with his Alliance collaborated with a local town to acquire a 112-acre farm. The town and the land trust worked together to conserve 100 acres of the land parcel, which was ultimately transferred to an organic farming family business. The 12 remaining acres, which were adjacent to existing water and sewer facilities, are now being used to  develop 40 affordable housing units.

Rosenberg said that one of the most encouraging aspects of the project occurred when the town and the affordable housing organization applied for state funding to help with water and sewer infrastructure connections. He was thrilled when all of the conservation land trusts joined the housing groups to co-sign a letter of support to the governor and the state legislature advocating for the funding.

In another success story that could theoretically be duplicated on the East End, Rosenberg cited the case of private property owners who wanted to make their indoor farmer’s market a year-round business and expand it to include affordable housing above the facility.

“They had no idea who to contact,” Rosenberg said. “But one of the Alliance’s conservation organizations was able to steer them to one of our affordable housing members, who is now an integral part of the development of that project.”

Similarly, if the East End affordable housing puzzle is to be addressed in a meaningful way, good-faith collaboration between the government, the private sector and various stakeholders in any given project is crucial. But it’s always a delicate dance with lots of moving parts.

There is no shortage of strategies and programs designed to provide affordable housing resources. And though there are not always enough funds to go around, it wouldn’t be accurate to say that the entire system is cash-strapped.

But even when governmental funds are available, it’s far from a glide path to implementation given the idiosyncrasies of the East End housing market, which is home to some of the most valuable real estate on the planet.

That was made painfully clear in “Housing a Nation: HCVs, Senior Housing and Other Resources,” one of the more compelling breakout sessions at the Bridgehampton event.

Moderated by Hunter Gross, a housing policy associate with ERASE Racism and a former president and current vice president of the Huntington Township Housing Coalition, the session ostensibly featured a panel discussion on the particular housing challenges of the East End senior citizen community as well as members of the Shinnecock Nation. But a good portion of the discussion focused on the pros and cons of Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs), the federal government’s assistance program for low-income families, the elderly and the disabled.

While the program’s funds are allocated at the federal level by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), HCVs are managed locally. For example, on the South Fork, HCVs are administered via the East Hampton Office of Housing and Community Development and the Southampton Housing Authority, respectively.

Gross asked the panel how to encourage local East End landlords to accept HCVs and what myths or fears needed to be addressed to facilitate that acceptance.

Curtis Highsmith, executive director of the Southampton Housing Authority, pointed out a number of barriers to entry from a potential landlord’s perspective. Highsmith noted that due to inflated rental rates in most of Southampton, landlords who participate in the HCV program are in essence being asked to accept what amounts to below-market rates for their properties, despite whatever subsidies they might be receiving from state and federal programs.

Additionally, since the East End market is still fairly seasonal in nature, local landlords tend to prefer summer rental scenarios, which keep their annual carrying costs down and lessen the wear and tear inflicted on a property by year-round residents.

Of course, some landlords also have what Highsmith called a “preconceived notion” of who affordable housing candidates are.

“There’s this understanding that they are not the best of the best, they’re not people who are desirable,” he said. “And that’s not only insulting; it’s also misleading and misinformed.”

Highsmith added that in order to bring landlords and property managers into the system, the Southampton Housing Authority was forced to ask HUD to bump up its funding allocations.

“We couldn’t get landlords,” he said. “We had to go to 120 percent of HUD’s determined payment standards in order for us to get qualified applicants to make their homes here in Southampton – and we’re still underutilized.”

Even more unfortunate, Highsmith noted that while Southampton was allocated approximately 230 vouchers from HUD, they were only able to find occupancy for between 90 and 100 program participants.

“That’s a deficiency,” he said. “And it’s not just because of a lack of landlords.”

Every new summer season brings more dire warnings that East End seniors, teachers, healthcare workers, food and beverage servers, firefighters, EMT workers and others are increasingly unable to find an affordable place to live in the towns they help support. Identifying the problems and approaching them as holistically as possible continues to be the strategy du jour.

Failure, as they say, is not an option.