Urge Support for Affordable Housing

An Oct. 8 letter from the Wainscott School Board to the district’s taxpayers about a proposed affordable housing development was called “inflammatory” and “a blindside” from “a very small but very vocal group” at a meeting on Friday at the senior citizens housing complex at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett.

Speakers included Michael DeSario, chairman of the Windmill Village I and II senior citizens developments and the St. Michael’s Housing Association; the Rev. Katrina Foster, pastor of St. Michael’s and Incarnation Lutheran Church in Bridgehampton; Neil Hausig, chairman of the board of the Whalebone Village apartments in East Hampton, and Gerry Mooney, co-manager of the St. Michael’s and Windmill Village complexes. They decried both the tone of the letter and the dearth of affordable housing for working people, their children, and senior citizens.

A proposed 49-unit development, on 31 acres owned by the town between Stephen Hand’s Path and Daniel’s Hole Road in the Wainscott School District, would include 20 one-bedroom, 20 two-bedroom, and 8 three-bedroom apartments, plus an apartment for a superintendent. Speakers at Friday’s meeting called the Wainscott board’s predictions of the increase in enrollment and taxes that would result wildly off-base.

David Eagan, president of the Wainscott School Board, and Kelly Anderson and William A. Babinski Jr., board members, had said a realistic estimate was 110 new students as a result of the project. Mr. DeSario called that figure, devised by a consulting firm the school board had hired, a “wild claim.”

The board also predicted an additional $1.6 million in tuition that would have to be paid to the East Hampton School District, $500,000 for additional staffing at the Wainscott School, which serves kindergarten through third-grade students, and a tax-rate increase of up to 169 percent.

Mr. DeSario argued that a truly realistic projection, based on the demographics of the town’s existing affordable housing developments, was an increase of approximately 29 students, fewer than 9 of whom would attend the Wainscott School. Citing a study by Tom Ruhle, the town’s director of housing, he said the a tax-rate increase would be $48.47 per $1,000 of assessed value. And he said that the school tax rate was far lower in Wainscott than in the town’s other hamlets. “We need to get back on track and get town support again,” he said. Although the project would take at least five to six years for completion, 50 people had already asked to be put on a waiting list.

The construction cost, estimated at $15 million, would be funded entirely through grants and tax credits, Mr. DeSario said, calling it “a win-win for the community.”

Ms. Foster said she received calls “almost every day from people desperate for affordable housing.” Some residents of the St. Michael’s complex had been living in their cars or “couch-surfing,” she said, mentioning a pregnant woman who had been living in a tent.

The waiting list for an apartment at St. Michael’s, she said, has more than 100 names. “This is an existential reality for our neighbors.” The entire community, she said, benefits “when our families are secure in a home.”

The need for affordable housing for all age groups has become more acute, Mr. Mooney said. After the mid-1990s, he said, soaring real estate costs made homeownership impossible for many. Consequently, people did not move out of affordable housing units, with the result that waiting lists are essentially frozen. “People come from as far away as Manorville to work here,” Mr. Mooney said. “The majority of people from East Hampton High School are not going to be able to live here. That shouldn’t be.” The trend is evident, he said, in the rising median age of volunteer firefighters throughout town. “They’re losing all the young people.”

Mr. DeSario urged those in attendance to call or write East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell to express support for the Wainscott development. “Because this angry letter went out, there’s been all this negative criticism,” he said. “We feel a little stalled, and we need support from the town.”