Income vs. Rental Gap Increasing in Westchester
As Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino works his way through the appeals process of a 2009 federal housing settlement demanding the county build affordable units in municipalities scattered throughout the area, statistics show a widening gap in the supply and demand for affordable housing at the national as well as the local level that make the HUD lawsuit look like just the tip of a growing iceberg.
A similar scenario in Greenburg has forced that town board to seek a developer of affordable rental housing when last week New York State rejected a proposal by Ferncliff Manor, an organization that provides services to the developmentally disabled, to lease property from the town that had previously been developed by WestHELP as affordable rental housing.
Those affordable units had been vacated when the town took the property back after the term of the contract by WestHELP expired.
The state decision expressed concern that affordable housing stock might be removed, forcing Ferncliff to seek another location for its educational campus.
Alexander Roberts, Founder and Executive Director of Community Housing Innovations (CHI), a White Plains-based nonprofit housing organization, said in an interview he believes the housing problem (both affordable and low-income) is one of demand caused by artificially restrictive zoning regulations that put all the affordable multi-family units into one tiny location and interferes with the free market. “We are not asking for more subsidy in the form of money,” he said. “The supply of affordable units is not expanding to meet the demand. Taxpayer subsidies are not sustainable.”
Roberts thinks that the county should be doing more because of the accelerating gap between need and housing supply.
In a media statement upon hearing the decision by the Second Circuit of Appeals did not go in his favor Astorino, referring to his objection to source of income legislation, said it was never about the Section 8 program, which provides vouchers to supplement the rent of low-income residents. “My objection has been turning this worthwhile voluntary program into a mandatory one that would compel every owner of a house or apartment to do business with the federal government – and take on all the rules and regulations that entails – upon a tenant’s presentation of a Section 8 voucher. I also felt that the source of income legislation would be detrimental to the housing settlement because it would act as a disincentive for developers to build affordable housing.”
Roberts thinks more responsibility should be placed on localities to increase opportunities to build multifamily housing through reform of local zoning.
In “Worst Case Housing Needs 2011” a survey for Congress conducted by HUD, the number of worst-case needs households (those households who spend more than half of their income on housing, and in most instances rental housing) in the U.S. is reported to be growing by leaps and bounds and continues unabated.
The report states: “Worst case needs affect all major racial and ethnic groups. Hispanic and non-Hispanic white households experienced the largest increases in both the number of very low-income renters and worst-case needs since 2009. As a result, 48 percent of new cases were found among white, 28 percent among Hispanic, and 13 percent from black households.”
The report further claims the number of renter households increased primarily because a substantial number of homeowners became renters as a result of the nation’s economic and housing market problems – unemployment and foreclosures. Falling incomes among renters and increased scarcity of affordable housing are also cited as reasons for people falling into the emergency needs category.
A look at Westchester County alone during the same time frame (between 2009 and 2011) with information supplied by the latest census shows that a vast majority of rental households are cost burdened. “Twenty-five percent of people who rent in Westchester are paying 50 percent of their income on that rent,” Roberts said. “We need to find solutions that provide an opportunity for all people,” he added.
If zoning does become the foundation for debate on where affordable housing may be built, it could become a Constitutional argument as Astorino has suggested since he began the appeals process against HUD in 2010.
