Regional Priorities

2010: The Issues Affecting the Long Island Region

Housing

Who doesn’t know Long Island families whose kids have moved away probably never to return? Who doesn’t know middle class working families on Long Island that are struggling to find homes they can afford? Who doesn’t know hard working middle class young married couples living with a parent and unable to afford a home of their own and unable to find an apartment?
All Long Islanders know from their life experience these days that young people and middle class families are not able to have the homes that prior generations of families on Long Island could afford. And all of the statistics bear that out. An overwhelming majority of Long Islanders still could not afford to buy their homes today, even with the recent decline in home prices. Many people struggle to meet their monthly housing costs. And many more people cannot find the housing types that they want and need.
Why has this happened?
It happened because, when the price of single-family homes spiked to historically unprecedented levels in recent years, Long Island did not have enough other kinds of housing to meet the needs of people who did not want, or could not afford, a single-family home.
Single-family homes predominate on Long Island, more so than in any other place in the nation. We have the lowest proportion of rental housing in the country, 17 percent, according the Census Bureau. That’s a legacy of Long Island’s growth years, when most everybody who moved here wanted a single family home. In those days, many young people got married in their early 20s and wanted to settle down. Family patterns were different; there were far fewer families with two wage earners.
Today, many young people do not get married until they are in their 30s; divorce rates have increased; and there are far more single-parent families. Many people do not want or need a single-family house; an apartment or town house would better suite their lifestyle. But because Long Island grew as a single-family home community, there are not enough apartments or town houses to meet that demand.
Those apartment and townhouses don’t exist here because, in general, local zoning authorities chose not to permit a variety of housing types to be built. Why didn’t local authorities permit a better mix of housing? Probably because that’s how the majority of Long Islanders wanted them to act. In other words, we wanted single-family homes and not more dense developments, such as townhouses, and that’s what we have gotten. The problem now is that we do not have nearly enough of the kinds of housing that many younger single people, many middle-class families, and many empty nesters, and many seniors need.
During the years that single-family home prices spiked and demand for apartments rose dramatically, so did apartment prices. According to the Rauch Foundation’s 2008 Long Island Index: “in 2000, 55% of rental apartments cost less than a $1,000 a month; in 2006, that share was cut in half, to 23%. By Contrast, homes and apartments renting for more than $1,500 more than tripled, from 11% in 2000 to 38% in 2006."
We already are seeing the consequences. More and more people are choosing to move to places where they can find nice housing that is more affordable. Our younger population appears to be shrinking faster than any other place in this part of the country. If that pace of outmigration continues, the result will be a constantly shrinking workforce, which will make it impossible for businesses to expand here. And if businesses can’t expand here, eventually they will choose to move as well. The tax base will shrink while costs continue to rise and the taxes we pay will get even higher.
Businesses already are worried about that and it’s affecting their business outlook. Recently, the “2008-2009 Long Island Economic Survey and Opinion Poll,” which surveyed thousands of businesses in the region, was released by Albrecht, Viggiano, Zureck & Company and Dowling College. The survey said that when asked, “What is the greatest obstacle Long Island faces in achieving greater economic success?” 37 percent responded: “Lack of Affordable Housing,” by far the highest response given. Higher even than the taxes businesses pay.
Can we solve this problem? Yes we can. The solution is to change the mix of housing types on the Island by building more affordable apartment and townhouse communities. But in order to do that, Long Islanders themselves will have demandED that their local zoning authorities permit new kinds of housing to be built.
The Long Island Workforce Housing Act, which went into effect on January 1, 2009, and which was conceived by the LIA, will go a long way toward making that happen. Now, under the law, 10 percent of all housing built on Long Island in developments of five units or more must be affordable. But a lot more needs to be done, and it will take a consensus of Long Islanders to make those things happen.
To gain that consensus, some misconceptions and legitimate concerns about what is called workforce or next generation housing need to be squarely addressed.
What makes that kind of housing more affordable? Density and government financial support. Homebuilders on Long Island are willing and ready to build all sorts of housing types if local zoning authorities permit them to do so. But homebuilders, like all people in business, need to make a reasonable profit. To accomplish that and still build housing that more people can afford, either of two things has to happen: first, the cost of the land or the construction has to be offset by government financial support; or, second, homebuilders have to be allowed to build more homes per acre.
Building more homes per acre is called density. How much density makes housing more affordable? The answer varies a little, but usually about ten units per acre works. That means, for example, ten apartments of mixed size, such as studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments. On one acre of land.
So, are we talking about becoming “the 6th borough”? Not even close. There are thousands of beautiful communities on Long Island and all across the country that have ten housing units per acre and they don’t look anything like a “6th borough”. Ten beautifully designed, attractive units can be built on an acre of property without going above a second floor. Take a look at these housing units, all more affordable, all currently on Long Island.
Is that kind of housing more cheaply built? It may surprise you, but exactly the opposite is true. Because people have long been concerned about badly constructed government-subsidized housing, the federal government has actually raised the construction standards for homes it financially supports so that, now, housing that is more affordable is constructed to a standard higher than local building codes require. The materials used are just as good as those used in most home building today. And architects across the country have come up with designs for multi-family homes that make them indistinguishable from large single-family homes nearby.
If more apartments and townhouses are built will that bring more people to Long Island? No. Right now thousands of young Long Islanders are living at home with their parents or living in “illegal” apartments. Thousands of empty nesters and seniors are looking for a way to leave their single-family house and still stay on Long Island. We’re talking about building studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments for those people. In other words, people who already live on Long Island.
But won’t the schools become overcrowded? Just the opposite. Studies on Long Island and across the nation have consistently shown that when a mix of housing types (studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments) are built on a plot of land instead of large single family homes, fewer children wind up going into the schools and the school districts get more property taxes. That may seem contrary to what your instincts tell you would happen, but it’s true. Four-bedroom houses are bought by people with a lot of kids. Studio and one-bedroom apartments are not.
Long Island’s housing problem is an issue that isn’t going to be solved by politicians; it’s going to be solved by people like you. Until you and your neighbors decide that it’s time to keep your kids on Long Island, until you decide to be sure that you have an apartment or townhouse to live in when you want one, and until you let your voice be heard in support of building more housing that more people can afford, it just won’t happen.
What can we do this year to move forward? Here are three things:
o Tell your town supervisor or village mayor we want our kids to be able to afford to live here: allow more types of housing to be built
o Then give those towns and villages State financial incentives to permit more housing types to be built
o And ask Governor Paterson to help by finding State-owned land on which more affordable housing can be built.