24 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • OCTOBER 2017 24 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 24 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
Accessorizing Long Island’s housing stock
By NANCY RAUCH DOUZINAS
One form of affordable housing Long
Islanders have long embraced – both
legally and illegally – is accessory
apartments, typically defined as a
separate, secondary dwelling unit,
either in the house itself or in a carriage
house or converted garage.
Two dynamics are driving demand
on Long Island: First, rising property
taxes and shrinking family sizes
have caused homeowners to seek
revenue from empty bedrooms; second,
lower-income residents, including
homeowners’ family members,
need affordable places to live.
The demand has been so great that
an estimated 90,000 such apartments
were installed illegally by
single-family homeowners by the
mid-1980s, according to the Long
Island Regional Planning Board.
Accessory apartments have great
advantages for the region since,
as a new Long Island Index study,
“Home Remedies – Accessory
Apartments on Long Island: Lessons
Learned” by Elizabeth Moore,
notes. They “don’t require large
infusions of capital, new roads, new
sewers or expansion of the electrical
grid. Instead, existing neighborhoods
absorb the rental-seeking
population like a sponge, while
stabilizing finances for tax-strapped
homeowners.”
Some of the lessons already learned
are pragmatic. Babylon, for example,
found that owner-occupancy is
crucial. With the town’s two-family
homes, the properties of absentee
landlords generated 50 percent of
all complaints while representing
just 10 percent of the housing stock.
A resident homeowner’s presence
usually means that the property is
better maintained as well.
Some lessons address the targeting
of specific community needs.
Hempstead, for instance, allows
accessory apartments if the homeowner
or spouse is 62 or older, in
order to make it easier for seniors to
remain in their homes. Oyster Bay
broadened the definition of “parent
child” apartments to permit
step-family members, in-laws and
grandparents and grandchildren.
Sagaponack allows them for on-site
farm-worker housing.
But the biggest lesson is that the resulting
patchwork of legal and illegal
accessory apartments contributes to
confusion about how the region will
provide affordable housing. There’s
no overall framework on a county
or regional level, and the more than
100 government entities making the
rules is staggering.
If we want to create legal affordable
housing – and assure employers
that it will be available – we must
make what we want clear and the
approval process predictable and
cost-effective. Accessory apartments
are a key ingredient, because
they provide the quickest and most
efficient response.
At the same time, the sheer number
of illegal apartments shows that
government is not responding to
Long Islanders’ needs. Those apartments
leave communities powerless,
in many cases, to control them,
and they add to the uncertainty for
those who would build legally.
Affordable housing is essential to
Long Island’s economic growth,
and greater clarity about how it
should be provided is vital to realizing
it. Expanding legal accessory
apartments should be one component
that communities across
Long Island consider. A clearer
framework on a county or regional
basis would set a context in which
homeowners and developers could
efficiently respond.
Douzinas is president of the Garden
City-based Rauch Foundation,
which publishes the Long Island
Index. Visit longislandindex.com.
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