Longtime locals have been priced further and further out of being able to live on the North Fork over the past decade, but this year could be a turning point at which regulators develop the muscle to prioritize keeping the people who make up the framework of a community here.
But that’s going to take some public pressure.
NYU public policy and history student Yan Albaladejo grew up in Greenport, and this summer he worked as an intern for the North Fork Environmental Council (NFEC), getting deeply involved in understanding the types of public policy that might make it possible for him and his friends to return home when they finish college. Mr. Abaladejo led a lively discussion sponsored by the NFEC on the topic of “Zoning for Affordable Housing” at Peconic Landing in Greenport Aug.13.
A new town funding stream for affordable housing, the Community Housing Fund, is just beginning to see some money flowing into it, and Southold Town and Greenport Village are revisiting their zoning codes, making this an ideal time for the public to make their housing needs clear to the governments that will decide how the North Fork changes in the years ahead.
“Low income residents have been priced out, and they’ve moved to areas like Riverhead, New York City and beyond,” said Mr. Albaladejo, who grew up in an apartment on Front Street above Burton’s Bookstore. “I think it’s having a very negative effect on the character of Southold Town, and the character is defined by the people who live here.”
“Affordable housing projects don’t really move in Southold Town,” he added. “We’re going to need Southold Town to step in as a municipality and help fight for this.”
Mr. Albaladejo invited Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi, Southold Town Assistant Planning Director Mark Terry and CAST Support Coordinator Daniella Menjivar to join in the conversation.
“Affordable housing needs to be easier to obtain in this town,” agreed Mr. Terry. “This is a cry from the population — to keep their relative here. Do not price them out.”
Mr. Terry added that there’s a huge gap between the average incomes here and the incomes needed to be able to buy a house here and carry a mortgage.
Ms. Menjivar, a social worker, said she witnesses firsthand the difficulties local families are having trying to make ends meet here, recalling a family she visited during a recent Christmas toy drive.
“They were not able to make it to pick up the toys, so I brought them over, and saw, first-hand, a family of five, living in a single room with no space,” she said. “The mother was very ashamed and didn’t want to let me in. I sat in my car afterward, the week of Christmas, really hurting and feeling for these families and for our community. I know she’s one of many. I’ve seen several families moving out of Southold Town.”
Ms. Menjivar said 73 percent of students in the Greenport school district are considered economically disadvantaged by the state. In Southold, 41 percent of students are classified as economically disadvantaged, while the number in Mattituck is 31 percent. While it’s widely recommended that households not have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, “I meet with people every day who allot more than 50 percent of their income toward rent,” she said. “The rent is going up and income is staying the same, and people are choosing between buying groceries and paying for rent.”
That’s why, she said, even when people have work here, they often have to leave because it doesn’t cover the cost of living here.
“Moving is very stressful, and moving out of your community is so stressful,” she added. “It’s a breeding ground for adverse childhood experiences, mental health issues and food insecurity. All these things are interconnected. It’s very disheartening and frustrating for me as a social worker. We have a problem to solve, but there’s no solution…. There’s no real effort being made to create affordable housing.”
Ms. Menjivar plans to devote her life to working to solve society’s problems, and she’s no stranger to the personal impact of the housing crisis. Her family moved seven times while she was growing up in Southold. Her parents are both pastors and now live in the parsonage of their church.
“I’m 25. I live with my parents. I have to start planning my future, and I don’t think I can stay here,” she said. “I love what I do, but it’s not set up for me to succeed here. We need to create places for our elders, so they can age comfortably. I see a lot of immigrants, low income families and seniors being affected directly by the lack of housing.”
Mr. Stuessi said Greenport Village hopes to lead the way in creating affordable housing on the North Fork, and is currently drafting code revisions that could allow two-family housing in areas of the village currently zoned for one-family houses and an affordable housing overlay district downtown that would allow property owners to build a third story on their buildings if they agreed to use a portion of the space for affordable housing. The village is also looking into ways to make it easier to turn existing outbuildings into legal affordable accessory dwelling units.
Mr. Stuessi, who sits on Southold Town’s Zoning Advisory Committee, is also pressing Southold Town to allow affordable housing in areas at the gateway to Greenport Village, especially the area just west of the village on the Main Road.
“Right now, you can have a gas station, a deli, a lumberyard and a bus yard there, but what you can’t build there today is a community center with a swimming pool and 55 units,” he said. “That should be permitted, as of right. One hundred and seventy people, overnight, could have a home.”
While the incorporated Village of Greenport has its own zoning code and village government that controls land use within its boundaries, efforts to build affordable housing in Southold Town have been stymied in recent years, in part due to the local backlash over a botched lottery in 2020 for apartments in the 50-unit Vineyard View housing complex on Route 48 in Greenport. Many local people were picked in the first lottery for units there, but it had to be redone because the developers of that complex failed to meet Fair Housing Act guidelines for how widely they marketed the apartments.
Proposals for several housing complexes in Cutchogue have been shot down by the community in the ensuing years, and a complex proposed on town-owned land on Carroll Avenue in Peconic was the subject of a lawsuit by neighbors last year.
Mr. Terry said he’s frustrated by the negative feedback for recently pitched affordable housing complexes.
“There are so many people who need housing in this town, if we don’t do something at this critical juncture, we’re going to be a population without workers,” he said. “I think there are places for affordable housing, and places where it would be a challenge.”
He added that housing density, “in the right spot, could be integrated into our existing streetscape,” and that many homeowners are eligible, under the current town code, to make an affordable accessory apartment in their own home.
“Most of our districts allow that,” he said.
Mr. Albaladejo asked Mr. Stuessi what he says to people who think affordable housing “ruins” the character of a community.
“Ever been to The Hamptons?” asked Mr. Stuessi. “They’re building a lot of affordable housing, and it’s not doing a damn thing to affect housing prices there. When you look at Sag Harbor or East Hampton, that’s where we’re going (in Greenport). If you had told me seven years ago what the property values would be today here, I would have told you you were out of your mind. It’s only going to increase.”
He added that the number one place tech workers want to work in the United States is New York City, and that many of them work remotely part of the time.
“When they only spend half the time in the office, where do you think they’re gonna head? Here,” he said. “That means we will have only more problems here, and we have to work harder and faster to solve for this.”
“One of the hardest things for me, as mayor, is having people sitting in my office telling me they lost their home,” he added. “One was a single mother with three kids who got kicked out of their place and had nowhere to go. We managed to find them a hotel room, and the kids hang out in the library after school because there’s not much room.”
Mr. Stuessi added that the community “just watched six acres of woods behind the North Fork Roasting Company be cleared to build a hotel,” The Enclaves, in Southold.
“They couldn’t build housing there. It wasn’t allowed, because of the zoning,” he said. “That could easily have been 80 units. This is why zoning is so important.”
Members of the public also had a lot to say.
Katy Stokes of Southold, who serves on the board of the Southold-Peconic Civic Association, said she has “two kids just out of college, and they’ll be living with us forever.”
“I think it’s lovely to focus on accessory dwelling units, but it is not the answer to our affordability crisis,” she said. “If you look at the real estate listings, the cheapest home is now a million dollars. We clearly need to do something different.”
She said the town should announce each year how much housing has been created that year.
“I think that would be really helpful to all of us,” she said. “It’s not just good intentions. What is actually happening in our town?”
“This is a 9-11 emergency,” said Walter Gaipa, owner of Marion Gardens in East Marion. “I have eight employees, and all of them rent. The most recent one was kicked out of her house, and she has a two-year-old son.”
He added that all recent proposals for affordable housing in Southold Town “have been shut down, for various reasons.”
“You’ve gotta get through the red tape and allow them to be profitable,” he said. “Accessory apartments are not going to solve a 700-person waiting list. This not-in-my-backyard syndrome, if you don’t allow people to live here, this place is going to be something where you don’t even want to live here yourself. This is not going to be a welcoming place. This is a real crisis, and it’s gotta be the number one thing on Southold’s agenda.”
Deborah Rivera Pittorino, the former owner of The Greenporter Hotel, said when she started in business she bought housing to rent to her workers at an affordable price.
“I sat through many meetings, supporting Rona (longtime North Fork housing advocate Rona Smith had proposed one of the Cutchogue developments, Cutchogue Woods and the current project in Peconic). With Cutchogue Woods — why are we shooting down this project? We really need to make this a priority. I personally don’t need affordable housing — I sold my business but I think this is enough talking. We need to do something.”
Mr. Terry said the speakers made “very valid points, and pointed out that developers of affordable housing often have difficulty, when working within existing town codes, being able to get enough of a return on their investment to make it worth their while.
“The process is broken,” he said. “The zoning update process is the best step forward. I hope people let us have it as to what we need to do.”
More details on the town’s zoning update project can be found at southoldzoningupdate.com.
Southold Town Councilman Brian Mealy, in the audience, was the only member of the Southold Town Board there.
He said the town is currently working to regulate short-term rentals, which he hopes “will alleviate pressure on the rental market, so longstanding residents might have opportunities to rent.”
He added that he was one of only two board members who voted in favor of the Cutchogue Woods project.
“We need your engagement to make this process better,” he told the crowd, and urged them to become involved in the town’s zoning update process. The town is expecting preliminary suggestions from its zoning update consultant this fall.
“We’re behind the eight ball with a lot of these issues. The brain drain is upsetting,” he said. “People grab me on the street and say ‘don’t forget my son. He has to live in my basement,’ or ‘my daughter had to move to North Carolina.”
What do you think the future of the North Fork will look like if we fail to build affordable housing?” asked Mr. Albaladejo of the panelists.
“The last person who leaves can turn off the lights,” said Mr. Stuessi. “We’re working on it, in Greenport, fast, but we’re only one square mile. I’m invested in working with the town on its zoning update. We need to think of it differently.”
He added that he finds it amazing to see kids living in the apartment where Mr. Albaladejo grew up bouncing down the steps and getting on the bus to go to school in the morning.
“I don’t want to walk around in February and be the only person on the streets,” he added. “We need people selling groceries, we need radiologists at the hospital and someone to make a burger when we need it.”
“The character of a town is way more than the way it looks,” said Mr. Albaladejo. “The character of a town is really the people who live here… I see a lot of my friends leaving Southold Town. I miss them dearly. Our investment in our communities is more than financial… that’s something I would like to see survive and not be priced out.”
