Housing Task Force

Housing Task Force Meeting #10 Thursday, April 11, 2024 7pm Village Hall Conference Room Attendants: Margaret Adamson, Chester Edwards, Kathy Pandekakes, Catrina Shivers, Aldo Vitagliano, Andrew Weiss, Ursula Winchell Absent: Arley Arno, Lisa Cordasco, Monica Fonseca, Jane Lippman, Luis Yumbla Guest Speaker: Louis Larizza Meeting called to order at 7:04pm Approving 3-28-24 meeting postponed for more time to review Bio of guest speaker Louis Larizza He’s been an affordable housing developer for both rentals and ownership housing for 40 years. He’s created almost 400 units in Westchester in 18 different municipalities with the majority being for sale units, where the County has helped fund many of those projects. Flaws to the current affordable housing application process were discussed. The complete application with supporting financial documentation is not reviewed until after the lottery is drawn. So, many times the applications do not meet the requirements, which delays reimbursement for additional costs like taxes, water, insurance, etc. to the developer. The County is currently trying to streamline the process. Rental and ownership properties for affordable units go to a lottery, managed by Westchester County’s third party agent. A majority of the applicants end up being local, even though it is marketed to the 9 county region. It’s difficult to hand select to a specific community because there are federal dollars involved that mandate how and where they are marketed. You can do homes specifically for veterans or seniors even with federal dollars backing the project. New York State has the Empire Support Housing dollars that can be tailored to specific demographics. When you have a mixed demographic affordable building (seniors, veteran, disabled, etc) do you have to do equal amounts for each demographic? No. It all has to do with the income. However, if you have disabled persons’ units, then you need more money to build handicap accessibility. The easiest thing to get built and manage is senior housing. Once you’ve completed a rental building, does the government agency still manage the influx of new tenants? Early on when they created affordable housing, the government would figure out the cost of the building and the housing authority would manage it and provide budgets to the government. Over the last 50 years, the government has negotiated the cost of building it, but management was put back in the hands of the developer. If a developer owns the building, they manage it the way they want it managed. Mr. Larizza puts quality into his units and cares about how they are managed, but all developers are not 1 like that. Building affordable housing is easy, it’s the paperwork and financing that is the difficult part. You need a whole team for that. Can you talk more about what we can recommend to the BoT in Port Chester, especially the purchasing options for affordable housing? You must find the land which can be difficult. You can’t have a two-family lot that sells for $150,000, for example, with no bonus units to make it profitable. For example, the Saw Pit property was zoned for 7 stories, but parking for that wouldn’t work, so I built it smaller, and added valets to accommodate better parking. Many developers want as many units as they could get to achieve the most money available, and it isn’t always feasible. Could you build housing in such an industrial area like Fox Island Road, for example? I bought a home there and converted it into 36 units for sale for families with financial assistance from government agencies. We did it by removing the landlocked features of the property with better traffic flow to the surrounding street. When proposing affordable housing developments many ask who is going to live there? On Cottage street we built 9 units. A woman that lives there now works for Goldman Sachs. We have a police officer and a Columbia doctor all living there. They started out without financial means and built their careers while owning their own homes. With purchasing affordable homes, once you buy you stay. There is no reevaluation of criteria like with rental units. However, you have to sell to someone that makes 80% of median income, in order to keep it affordable for the next purchaser. If it’s a rental do they get reevaluated if they make more than the required? There’s criteria that requires they must meet certain income thresholds. If income exceeds those thresholds, they must move out to allow someone within the threshold to rent the unit. What agency or government entity vets the list of applicants for rentals? The County does the lottery and vets the applicants. It’s a third party non-profit. There’s no one in the Village that handles that. The County has a third party non-profit that conducts the lottery. Can you prequalify before entering the lottery and will that improve the process? After the lottery is done, it takes time to review applications which, due to the lengthy wait period, may cause legitimate applicants to no longer qualify. Land Acquisition Fund of Westchester County can facilitate buying the land to make affordable housing more feasible. I won’t buy any land until the municipality approves it for affordable housing. You have to involve Planning and get approvals before you buy the land. In higher valued areas of Port Chester, would the County give you more money because the land is worth more? 2  The County gives you an appraisal of what you will ultimately build, not what it values at before the build. You don’t get any tax breaks. For a unit in Rye, you may get $100,000. The dollar amount that I sell it for is relevant because of the Area Median. One Committee member stated that it’s taxed at the sale price; the end result is that the community subsidizes it via the tax assessment. Mr. Larizza elaborated on the nuance of that. He referenced that when building senior housing, there are no school children living there that add to the cost of school budgets. The Village has the zoning district CD-4 which covers a large residential area of Port Chester. Recently, the Village changed much of CD-4 to R2F, which disincentivized building more density in those areas. How do we build out more? What do you think we could recommend? For every unit the developer must pay $6000 now to Veolia for water. That puts a burden on any developer, and a big burden on affordable housing in general. The County would have to give more money to make affordable development feasible. If the developer takes County money, the affordable units must be marketed to the 9 county region, and if you don’t you are not bound to the 9 county region. Can we incentivize it in a different way? You could do that on a sale, but it would be more difficult on a rent because the lower rental income would not be feasible. Port Chester doesn’t allow flag lots to subdivide and build a second home on a property. Rye and Greenwich allow that. Port Chester doesn’t want more overcrowding and we don’t have many parcels to do that. However, that is a way to create more affordable housing units. Is it more beneficial for ownership or rental? Home ownership creates pride in your neighborhood. With subsidized government programs you only need 5% down for downpayment, and you can get grants and many funding sources to help with ownership. One member stated that there are first time home buyer classes that WRO does. There are ways to get money that way. Another member stated that there are so many people that don’t have the money for a down payment. Since Port Chester has a lot of economically disadvantaged people, would affordable rentals be a better option? 3  There are people that are way below 80%. You have to accommodate both affordable rentals and affordable homes to buy. What do you think the balance is on the need for affordable housing in rentals and to purchase? Regardless, the need is there for affordable housing and not just 80% AMI. We are surrounded by Rye Brook and Rye which are two very wealthy areas. Port Chester’s home sales’ numbers sound like they are reasonable because we are surrounded by wealthier communities in comparison. We want a balance between affordable and market value. What is that balance? That’s a question for an economist. We need housing to rent and buy, for both affordable and market value. One member stated that it’s important to recognize that incomes haven’t increased and the housing being built has to match up with the fact that incomes haven’t gone up. Mr. Larizza stated that new buildings with units at $3000 a month are not affordable. With the 10% affordable set aside, the developer loses rental income for however long that unit stays affordable. His idea is instead of requiring 10% affordable units of a development, to require only 5% provided on site, and the cost to build the additional 5% be set aside into a separate fund to create an affordable housing building with a lower AMI. The County or municipality would have to manage the funds for that. Instead of developers carrying the weight of affordable units, they would contribute to a fund for an affordable housing building. It would also, hopefully, put managing affordable housing buildings into the hands of more experience affordable housing developers. One member stated that Mr. Larizza’s buildings are unique, but that all developers are not like him. There are issues with other management agencies that do not do right by their tenants. Mr. Larizza stated that it’s great to have 350 more affordable units added with development, but they may be unaffordable to existing Port Chester residents. Meeting closed at 8:07pm Next Meeting on Thursday, April 25, 2024 7pm at Village Conference Room Aldo Vitagliano will be subbing for Chester Edwards as Chair for the next 2 meetings. 4