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Russell’s ‘State of the Town’ speech: Another year, another plea for affordable housing in Southold Town

Supervisor Scott Russell discusses the proposed budget with residents at the Nov.9 budget hearing. Photo: Denise Civiletti

Supervisor Scott Russell took the opportunity of his annual “State of the Town” address last night to make another pitch for affordable rental housing in Southold.

“There’s really a myth about what we’re trying to do,” Russell said. The town wants to provide housing opportunities for “people who already live here and work here,” he said.

“It’s not going to create a huge explosion in the schools, which are shrinking anyway.” The code prioritizes people who already live in a district — to prevent population shifts from one district to another.

Affordable housing is needed for young people in the workforce and retirees or people about to retire.

“They can’t afford to stay here,” Russell said. “If we don’t do something, we’ll be using a lot of volunteers and a lot of knowledge. We’ll be losing our workforce, the people who come to fix the oil burner when it breaks, the people who work at the hospital, the people who volunteer for the fire department.”

When affordable housing is proposed, the public seems to lose sight of “who our target audience is,” the supervisor said. “There’s a real disconnect.”

To dispel the myths, the town has hired a a videographer to produce a video that will be shown on channel 22, Russell said. The video will highlight the people who need the housing opportunities.

Russell reiterated affordable housing ideas he floated during last year’s state of the town speech, in which he called on the town to create a minimum of 50 new affordable apartments over the next three years, in small scale projects “scattered” throughout the hamlets. He also called for amending the zoning code to allow the development of up to six apartments as a principal use in commercial zones.

The first proposal, for the creation of an overlay zone that would allow construction of high-density affordable rentals on a small scale, was adopted by the board in August.

Russell brought up his second proposal in the 2016 speech — apartments as a principal use in commercial zones — at a work session in December.

Town board members requested additional information before it would agree to the idea and wanted to analyze which commercial zones would be appropriate for the special exception use. Russell said at the time he would ask the town’s housing committee and code committee to take up the matter and develop the code provisions to implement the idea.

Last night, Russell pledged to focus on getting this code revision passed in 2017.

Watch the supervisor’s speech here.

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Denise Civiletti
Denise is a veteran local reporter and editor, an attorney and former Riverhead Town councilwoman. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including a “writer of the year” award from the N.Y. Press Association in 2015. She is a founder, owner and co-publisher of this website.