ALBANY - After years of failed efforts, state lawmakers Wednesday passed the first new set of rules aimed at boosting affordable housing on Long Island.
The Long Island Workforce Housing Act would allow real estate developers building five or more homes anywhere in Nassau or Suffolk to increase their building density by 10 percent -- but require them to set aside at least 10 percent of the homes for affordable housing.
"This legislation will make a real difference in the availability of workforce housing and help ensure that our children have the opportunity to remain on Long Island," said Sen. Dean Skelos (R- Rockville Centre), the measure's sponsor.
The Senate passed the act 48-9, and the Assembly did it unanimously without debate. Gov. David A. Paterson was reviewing it, a spokesman said.
The bill, versions of which have been pushed for six years by the Long Island Association, was met with acid criticism from two New York City Democrats, who argued its new opt-out clauses could worsen Long Island's racial and economic segregation.
The measure defines an affordable home as one for households earning up to 130 percent of Long Island's median income -- about $88,350 a year for a single resident or up to $126,250 for a family of four.
Instead of requiring affordable units from the developer on site, municipalities could have them built elsewhere in the same community. Or the municipality could require the developer pay a fee which must be used to build affordable housing in the same community, or pay to build housing in another locality in the same county by mutual agreement. Or it could go to the Long Island Housing Partnership for affordable housing and down payment assistance.
Allowing affordable units to be built in another community "could increase discrimination on Long Island," said Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), who prefers a bill backed by housing advocates that sets benchmarks for equal distribution of such housing and rewards governments that build it.
Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson (D-Bronx) agreed. "There is a history of housing discrimination [on Long Island] and we need to be addressing that," she said.
But several Long Island senators praised the measure as a good, if imperfect, start, including Democrat Craig Johnson of Port Washington, who said, "If it's a decision between something or nothing, we have to do something."
"The point is, in one way or another, the municipalities all have to take up the issue of affordable housing and do something - even those that have been resistant in the past - which, let's face it, is most municipalities on Long Island," said the measure's Assembly sponsor, Robert Sweeney (D-Lindenhurst).