The Community Housing Board plans an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) forum about grants; at their Thursday meeting, CHB members also further explored housing limitations in the Near Shore and Peninsular Overlay District.
The ADU forum will occur on Friday, June 16, at 5:30 PM, in the Shelter Island Public Library.
Shelter Island is one of 10 municipalities selected for New York’s Plus One ADU Program. It pairs the Community Housing Board with the Community Development Corporation of Long Island to issue grants up to $125K (for a total of $2M). Eligible local homeowners can use the funds to build a new accessory dwelling unit on their property or improve an existing ADU to make it compliant with code requirements.
Initially, CDCLI said income eligibility would be at or below Nassau/Suffolk Area Median Income ($146,400 for a family of four), but the Community Housing Board said Thursday the criteria were being refined. Online applications are also in the works. Details should be ironed out by next week’s forum.
‘What’s going on here?’
The housing board also discussed the Near Shore and Peninsular Overlay District, concerned about misinformation in a recent ad by a trio of candidates in the upcoming Democratic primary.
At a previous meeting, CHB members talked about possibly asking the Town Board to rethink a ban on accessory apartments in the Island’s largest zoning district on a case-by-case basis for Community Housing licenses.
These licenses, issued by the Community Housing Board, enable the rental of accessory apartments strictly for year-round housing for eligible tenants from the Town’s housing registry at rates established by the county.
But no formal proposal or presentation was made.
So board members were surprised to see their exploratory conversation exploited to attack the Town Board in an ad by the campaign of three candidates in the upcoming Democratic primary.
The candidates — Gordon Gooding, running for supervisor, and Albert Dickson and Benjamin Dyett, running for Town Board — incorrectly claimed that the Community Housing Board “is proposing” that the Town Board change the code and that “the Town Board will soon consider” this “detrimental change to Town Code.”
The ad bore the ominous title “What’s going on here?” Its subheadline read: “Town Board’s Proposal to Permit Accessory Housing Units in Sensitive Shoreline Areas.”
Consequently, “people freaked out,” CHB chair Liz Hanley said at Thursday’s meeting. “But it was just not true.”
Maria Maggenti described it this way: “These are conversations we’re having about things that might be useful in our quest for more housing.”
Hanley said Gooding told her he’d “set it right,” but the ad was still up on the campaign’s website Thursday evening.
She asked CHB members to read up on the zone and to think about possible environmental impacts and how they’re measured, particularly regarding water usage and wastewater flows. She reviewed some elements common to all homes on Shelter Island and some specific to the Near Shore Overlay.
What’s the Near Shore Overlay?
The overlay protects “selected areas of unique importance to the water and other natural resources of the Town.”
Several criteria define these:
- the freshwater table is close to sea level, and the risk of saltwater intrusion exists or has occurred through the consumptive use of available potable water
- the land surface is close to the level of the freshwater table, increasing the risk of pollution of the aquifer
- the land drains toward creek or bay waters, increasing potential pollution from surface or below-ground drainage
- the density of development and anticipated future of development threaten the ecologically sensitive areas
- the land drains toward freshwater ponds which are hydraulically connected to outcroppings of the freshwater table, which may result in pollution of the freshwater table
Find additional details in the online Town Code “Chapter 133 Zoning” at ecode.com.
Given the Island’s squiggly coast, numerous creeks, and deep embayments, the overlay is the Town’s largest zoning district (see the areas in pink on the map above). And its rules — including the ban on accessory apartments — trump whatever regulations may apply in the underlying zoning districts.
‘Zoning creates unaffordability’
As CHB member Bran Dougherty-Johnson put it, the district might be another instance of how “zoning creates unaffordability.”
Hanley said she’s troubled by dissonant aspects of the Town Code that allow for very large homes in desirable waterfront areas while making it difficult to site affordable units.
CHB member Mark Mobius asked whether the Community Housing need could be met without a change in zoning; it may be there are sufficient options available in areas not covered by the overlay.
“I don’t see a longterm solution that doesn’t address this,” Hanley said.
Bill Mastro said going forward, “I think our job would be to narrow very clearly what the proposal would be and why the proposal would not be environmentally a problem.”
