Astorino Challenges HUD Secretary on Affordable Housing Settlement

For the fifth time, Westchester County’s plan to comply with the 2009 Affordable Housing Settlement has been disapproved by HUD. This time in addition to rejecting the plan, HUD has added new demands to the original agreement.

In a letter dated May 13, HUD lays out their reasons for the disapproval and makes far-reaching demands for corrective actions to bring Westchester into compliance. In response, County Executive Rob Astorino called HUD’s actions “unprecedented bureaucratic overreaching” and said that the demands were an “unwarranted trampling of local zoning rights.”

Astorino has scheduled a meeting with Shaun Donovan, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in Washington to review the letter and to ask HUD to retract the demands that are “economically and legally” impossible to meet.

Some of the requirements in contention are as follows:

Zoning: the May 13 letter calls for County to overcome exclusionary zoning practices and challenge local zoning ordinances. Furthermore HUD is asking for an outline of steps the county will take if a municipality fails to remove a prohibitive ordinance including “funding suspension, termination and litigation.”

However, according to former Mayor Carolyn Stevens who has studied the issue, economics, not restrictive zoning has been the problem in providing affordable housing. She said, “The impediment to building affordable housing in Westchester has never been zoning, but rather one of economics. Without substantial subsidies, the land cost and the taxes in Westchester make it economically unfeasible to build traditional affordable housing.”

Source of Income Legislation: The HUD letter demands that Westchester ban “source of income” discrimination in housing. This refers to a practice where if the source of a prospective tenant’s income is revenue other than a traditional pay check, landlords might deny a prospective tenant a lease. The Board of Legislators passed legislation prohibiting source of income discrimination, but Astorino vetoed it. HUD is now demanding that the legislation be reintroduced, promoted and passed. In the interim, HUD has stopped funding Community Development Block Grant projects which could potentially cause the loss of 18 jobs, and puts $6 million of funding at risk.

Increase of housing for families with children: Beyond legislative changes, the letter calls for the County to provide more housing for families with children. The original settlement called for 750 units and did not dictate the sizes or number of bedrooms. Now HUD is seeking to require the County to make 50% of those units three bedrooms or more! No additional funding is required and Astorino estimates that 375 units would cost $56 million. Since the total subsidy for 750 units is $51.6 million there would be no money left to build the remaining 375 units. Furthermore, the letter does not consider who will be eligible to rent these larger units. In fact, according to Carolyn Stevens, those who rent the larger units will need to have a “higher income level making these units less rather than more affordable.”

Astorino reported that the County is moving forward with affordable housing. To date, 164 units have been approved by the federal monitor which is ahead of the agreed upon timeline. In addition, an additional 102 units are pending approval.

It should be noted that the settlement agreement is the subject of litigation, under the jurisdiction of the United States District Court. If the County and HUD cannot reach an agreement the Court will have the last word.

Lindsay agrees with Stevens that the major obstacle to affordable housing in the County is financial.  Acquisition of land, construction costs, and the tax level are all prohibitive. At the July 21 meeting Lindsay said, “it was quite clear that the Board of Legislature has no appetite for allocating more money than called for in the Settlement Agreement for this purpose. “

So, where does this leave us? In Scarsdale, the Planning Board will continue discussions on the adoption of the model code ordinance at their July 27th meeting. Upon approval, the code will be considered by the Board of Trustees. And to deal with the County’s woes, Astorino will go to Washington to speak to Secretary Donovan with the goal of “getting affordable housing built in Westchester.”