A vote by some Democrats on the Westchester County Board of Legislators which blocked funding for affordable housing has left county administration officials struggling to find a Plan B.
The county anticipated reaching the number of required affordable housing units six months ahead of schedule, but Westchester lawmakers, in a 9-5 vote on June 13, failed to pass spending funds on 10 affordable housing units in the Cambium development located in the village of Larchmont.
Now, the county must find an alternate site to construct additional affordable housing in an effort to comply with the stipulations of a 2009 settlement. The county is mandated to fund 750 units of affordable housing in 31 municipalities by Dec. 31, 2016.
And, to date, county officials have been unable to provide specifics as to its next course of action.
There are currently 54 affordable housing units in the pipeline pending approval by the Westchester County Planning Department, according to Ned McCormack, communications director for County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican. But McCormack did not specify where the developments would be located, noting that Yorktown, Lewisboro, Lincolndale and Cortlandt were all being considered.
“If the county fails to meet its 750-unit obligation at the end of the year, responsibility for the fines of up to $60,000 a month will be on these legislators who said ‘no’ to affordable housing,” McCormack said.
Funding for the Larchmont development, located at 10 Byron Place in the town of Mamaroneck, required a supermajority of 12 votes to approve a $3 million purchase of those 10 affordable housing units.
“It was a disappointing vote,” said county Legislator Michael Kaplowitz, a Yorktown Democrat. “These units probably would have counted, but unfortunately we will now have to look elsewhere.”
But according to county Legislator Catherine Parker, a Rye Democrat, all 17 legislators received written communication from the court-appointed housing monitor’s office on the same day as the vote to acknowledge that the units the county desired to purchase would not count, ultimately because the town of Mamaroneck had previously created these 10 units of affordable housing prior to the settlement.
“For any legislator who had bothered to ask Carolyn Stevens, community liaison who works with Jim Johnson, the monitor, they would have heard significant doubt that the units would be counted,” Parker said.
According to the housing settlement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, the county Board of Legislators is not permitted to fund more than 25 percent of the total number of 750 affordable housing units through the acquisition of pre-existing housing units.
But McCormack even questioned whether or not the county had reached that threshold for pre-existing units. “The argument that we’ve reached that cap is completely erroneous,” McCormack said. “Even with the approval of these 10 units, the county would still have been 77 units below the cap.”
In May, the county found itself in hot water regarding the Conifer project, which is a 28-unit development located at the Chappaqua station in New Castle. Had the federal court not overruled the monitor, Westchester County would have faced $60,000 a month in fines and a potential penalty of having to fund additional affordable housing units for not reaching its benchmark.
