Charity’s Column: Once upon a time on Shelter Island, we built affordable housing.  It worked.

This is a story about what happened the last time the Town of Shelter Island found the money and the political will to help regular people live here. I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating because it actually happened. 

In 1985, my husband and I bought a 2BR, 1 bath cottage on West Neck Road; our first home, when he got an unexpected bonus. We were thrilled. Even then, Shelter Island faced an acute lack of affordable housing for year-round residents.

After years of debate, a housing project, which spanned the administrations of two three-term supervisors, Jeffrey Simes and Hoot Sherman, resulted in six homes on Bowditch Road, constructed in the early 1990s on land owned by the Town, and sold to families who were chosen by lottery.

To enter the lottery, family income had to be about $65,000 or less in today’s dollars, plus about $8,000 (today’s dollars) in savings to qualify for the subsidized purchase terms, and a commitment that they would stay for at least 10 years.

That affordable housing initiative did not bring the community together in support. There were some who thought it was a big mistake for the Town to get involved with affordable housing. In the Town Clerk’s files, I found a lengthy and well-reasoned letter written to Supervisor Simes in the spring of 1988 that concluded, “We may only be benefiting a handful of families at the expense of all.”

Some feared the winners would flip their properties, put their kids into school off-Island, and move west. Other letters in Town files from lottery winners show that over half of those initially chosen decided to withdraw due to delays in the program, and anger at how the Town handled the selection process. 

But six families went through with it, and have been fruitful and multiplied. They volunteered to serve in the Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services. They sent their kids to school on the Island, and some now have grandkids. Some of the lottery winners still work for the Town, helping to run the court, and maintain our roads. Another has worked on the ferry for many years.

Their good work over the past three decades has improved the quality of everyone’s lives.

By any measure, the affordable housing initiative of the 1990s was a success. Those families are still helping to support the local economy, standing by our community in sickness and health. One of them is an elected official, Brian Sherman, the superintendent of highways.

When the first snowstorm blankets the roads, I will be very glad that actions taken by the town 30 years ago made it possible for Mr. Sherman to remain part of our community.

A downturn in the local economy and a building slump helped make the town’s affordable housing plan economically feasible 30 years ago. If we opt in to Proposition 3 and start taxing those who buy homes costing more than $1 million to create a Community Housing Fund, we’ll have a way forward.

Deciding how to deploy the money fairly and effectively will likely involve at least as much discussion, disagreement, and hurt feelings as it did in the 1990s, but if it results in working families staying or moving here, going to school, working, and building their lives here, it will be worth it.

In 2014, a real estate broker told me that there’s no such thing as affordable housing on Shelter Island. He was right then, and the intervening years have just made him righter. If we want young families, farmers, teachers and emergency workers to live here, we have to subsidize their housing. 

Thirty years ago, we summoned the nerve to do that, and it worked.