Low-Income Housing

An anonymous letter is circulating among local officials that purports to come from a young woman whose family is unhappy about a house in their East Hampton Village neighborhood because an "incredible number of migrant workers [. . .] run in and out . . . like chickens."

Saying they "give me funny looks" and "stared at me," the letter-writer asks why officials have done nothing to make the landlord responsible for breaking the law that limits occupancy by more than three unrelated persons.

"Is this what our E.H. is coming to, just for fast-buck people who do not care about anything but money?" the writer asks.

This letter reeks of bias, but it also points to a growing problem that needs to be addressed. There are an estimated 600 or more workers on the East End this summer who have come here legally on short-term visas to work in the fields and gardens and on the estates. As a community, we ask these laborers to do the hard work by day. Do we also, as the letter-writer would like, expect them to disappear when the work day is done?

In addition, there may be as many as 500 persons here for the summer from Spanish-speaking countries and from Ireland who work in the motels and restaurants, particularly in Montauk. While many are housed in old motels or cottages that pre-exist present zoning laws, others crowd into whatever places they can find. Sometimes these accommodations have proven to violate building codes and to be fire hazards.

There are indeed laws here intended to limit group occupancy. They were designed to deter crowds of partying singles from disrupting quiet neighborhoods. In recent years, as seasonal workers have become more and more important to the economy, business owners have had to make more use of houses built for single families for their crews. Would the letter-writer prefer a return to the substandard barracks that once went with the potato fields?

Many families here today are former migrants or the children and grandchildren of migrants who settled among us and began to reap the harvest of the American dream. Our country still holds this promise for others.

As we celebrate our nation's beginnings this week, it behooves us as a community to see more low-income multifamily housing developed. There are few alternatives.