From 13 to None On Harbor Housing

Of all the possible outcomes for the much-ballyhooed agreement between Sag Harbor Village and the developers of the Watchcase condominiums on mandatory affordable housing, the deal now about to be completed is about as poorly realized as we could imagine.

If all goes as planned, the Sag Harbor Community Housing Trust, established to provide housing with money from the development firm, will buy an existing, nine-unit complex off Route 114 called the Cottages. The problem is that it will not provide even one new unit of affordable housing because the complex is at full occupancy. Contrast that with what could have been.

Back in 2007-8, when the developer was seeking final approval to convert the decrepit factory site to top-dollar apartments, it faced what it said was a big problem: The county required that one-fifth of the units would have to be affordable. This would have worked out to about 13 price-controlled apartments. It wasn’t surprising when the developer protested, claiming the requirement would be financially disastrous.

Many Sag Harbor retail and restaurant owners fell into line behind the developer, applauding when the village’s planning board voted to override the county mandate. They apparently feared that if the Watchcase firm were forced to rent 13 units at less than top dollar, it might walk away entirely from the project. We thought then, as we do now, that the developer was engaging in scare tactics and that its resistance was really about maximizing financial return and keeping the working class as far away as possible from its well-to-do future tenants. The site, as vast as it is, could well have been configured in a way to accommodate both.

Instead of providing 13 units, the developer offered a payola of $2.2 million for unspecified affordable housing elsewhere. Had the trust received the money at that time and broken ground on new housing, it might have been at least a partial success. As it stands now, the deal appears an abject failure. Not a single person or family has found new, sensibly priced housing in the six years that followed — and will not as things stand.

One puzzle throughout all of this is that then-Sag Harbor Mayor Greg Ferraris, who helped the company avoid its obligation to provide the housing by inappropriately inserting himself into planning board discussions at the time, is now a key player on the trust. He and other members of the group are pushing the wholly inadequate “cottages” plan —  which is outside the village line and in another school district, Wainscott, no less. While those supporting the Watchcase developer may have meant well, the results are nothing to be proud of now.

Every additional house or apartment that government can make available for this area’s working people and older residents at a cost they can afford is desperately needed. Those who put threats from the backers of the luxury complex ahead of the needs of the people who are the backbone of the community must be called out for doing so. Sag Harbor’s allowing so many affordable units to slip through its grasp, when the Watchcase investors had an obligation to provide them, should be a lesson to other local governments tempted to go soft on developers.