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Forum scheduled to seek input on housing needs

JULIE LANE PHOTO Community Housing Board Co-Chair Mary-Faith Westervelt hopes a community forum will provide a catalyst to the creation of sustainable year-round housing.
JULIE LANE PHOTO
Community Housing Board Co-Chair Mary-Faith Westervelt hopes a community forum will provide a catalyst to the creation of sustainable year-round housing.

Determined to widen its outlook on methods of providing affordable rental accomodations, the Community Housing Board (CHB) is inviting representatives of various organizations, businesses, town government, the Shelter Island School and police, firefighters and emergency services responders to participate in a forum at the end of the month.

Those who participate will receive a list of questions the CHB hopes will prompt a discussion creating momentum toward its goal of creating reasonably priced rentals.

Among the questions will requests for information on difficulties securing workers, especially with seasonal variations for businesses; concerns about maintaining volunteer fire and emergency services personnell as veterans of the two forces age; ideas for housing arrangements the forum participants might have; and efforts employers might already have or have contemplated for housing their workers on the Island.

The CHB discussed the agenda at a meeting Monday night and invitations are to go out at the end of this week.

The public forum is scheduled for Monday, March 27, at 7 p.m. in Town Hall and  is open to all.

While only a few names of people seeking housing are on a registry the CHB maintains, members believe that’s because they haven’t been able to identify housing sources. But anecdotally, they believe there is a need to house workers who currently commute from off-Island to work here because they can’t find reasonably priced apartments. Also the CHB has heard about students who have returned to live with their parents after college because they can’t find apartments of their own.

In addition to the forum, committee members plan two other initiatives this month:
• Councilwoman Chris Lewis, Town board liaison to the CHB, said she wants to visit with East Hampton officials who have successfully created community housing.
• CHB Co-chair Mary-Faith Westervelt will speak with town representatives about applying for a Community Development Block Grant. Such grants might garner less than $15,000 and would represent only a piece of what would be needed. But the money could become part of a public-private partnership fund that could assist owners of properties to pay for necessary upgrades making them available as apartment rentals.

From the time the CHB was conceived, it was with the expectation that rather than building new structures, some of the housing would come from existing stock where property owners had space to rent, therefore scattering such housing throughout the town.

That doesn’t prohibit a new structure being constructed, even though the one project submitted to the CHB by realtor and developer Janalyn Travis-Messer failed to gain traction with the Town Board at the end of 2016.

That failure, according to most Town Board members, was based on a belief that the proposed housing was too dense for the site at North Ferry and Hedges roads.

But Ms. Travis-Messer maintains the town never meant to create community housing, but established the CHB as a means of giving lip service to the idea.

Previous projects never got past the CHB because as soon as neighbors got wind of proposals, they rallied to defeat them, according to Ms. Westervelt.

She and her CHB colleagues are hoping the forum might provide a catalyst to move forward with some rental housing.

Three initiatives remain on the committee’s agenda for further discussion:
• Examination of the town’s Comprehensive Plan with an eye to determining if changes pertaining to housing need updates.
• Review of the floating zone process in that part of the Town Code that provides for community housing.

Committee members believe the concept of scattering rentals throughout the town is sound, but some changes to the process may be in order.