Some Suburbs Are Actually Trying to Solve the Housing Shortage

The New York City metro region is in the grips of a dire housing shortage. Rents and home prices are skyrocketing, and evictions are rising. A major factor fueling the crisis is that New York suburbs build less housing than almost any of their peers: In the 2010s, New York’s suburbs in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island built three times less housing per capita than the city’s New Jersey suburbs, thanks largely to restrictive zoning regulations.

But in some suburbs, there’s increasing appetite for that to change. In Long Island’s Suffolk County, and in the upper reaches of the Hudson Valley’s exurbs, a few municipalities are considering steps — some big, some small — to build more housing.

The most dramatic of these efforts is in Kingston, the city of nearly 25,000 people about 100 miles north of New York City, which is entirely rewriting its zoning code to address the city’s housing crisis.

Kingston home prices and rents have soared in recent years, yet the city has built new housing at a snail’s pace, permitting just six units per 1,000 residents in the past decade. Compounding the problem, hundreds of units have recently been converted to Airbnbs or other quasi-hotel services, taking them off the market for locals.

In response, Kingston is seeking to enable the creation of new housing stock through a citywide rezoning that will eliminate nearly all single family-only housing zones in the city; abolish parking minimums, which frequently limit space available for housing; and place restrictions on short-term rentals like Airbnbs.

This is a dramatic departure from the city’s current zoning plan, which requires single-family housing in many areas in the city, requires two parking spaces per unit of housing, and imposes no significant limits on short-term rentals.

The rezoning will create “a more vibrant, denser, easily navigated community, while preserving the historic feel of this small city,” said Anthony Tampone, a housing activist who pushed for the rezoning as part of the group Kingston Code Reform Advocates.

“What would previously have been a single-family zone, now you’re allowed to do things like small multiplexes, corner stores, carriage houses,” he said.

The plan has wide support on the council, and is expected to pass when it is brought to a vote, likely early next year.

“The current zoning setup falls short in many ways. The overall approach that’s being proposed seems far more rational and community-friendly than the current one,” said Kingston Common Councilmember Carl Frankel, a Democrat who supports the plan, pointing to how it would streamline the process for homeowners to add secondary accessory units to their properties.

And while upzoning and tenant protections are often framed in contrast to one another, Kingston lawmakers view them as complementary: Earlier this year, the city became the first New York municipality north of Westchester to implement rent stabilization, a change which will cap yearly rent increases on about one in ten of the city’s housing units.

When Minneapolis pursued a similar rezoning to Kingston’s in 2018, results were underwhelming, as only a few dozen new medium-sized buildings were constructed in its wake. Bartek Starodaj, who is spearheading the rezoning initiative as Kingston’s director of housing initiatives, said Kingston’s plan is more ambitious.

“Minneapolis didn’t change minimum lot sizes or density requirements. We are taking that comprehensive approach with our rezoning,” he said.

Local housing affordability activists are broadly supportive of the rezoning plan, but hope to see its final version go further in restricting Airbnb and other short-term rentals, and requiring larger developments to have more affordable units.

The current plan would require mid-size buildings to make one in 10 units available to people earning 80 percent of the area median income. It would also ban new conversions of houses into short-term rentals if the owner doesn’t live in them, but allow existing short-term rentals to remain.

For the Many, a progressive Hudson Valley political group, is pushing to bump up the affordability requirement in the new code to two in 10 units, and hopes to see existing short-term rentals banned entirely in properties with absentee owners.

“We want to see current stock be freed up for use by long term residents and see the prices go down as a result of that,” said Brahvan Ranga, For the Many’s political director. “We also think that the 10 percent affordability requirement is woefully inadequate.”

Asked how recently sentiments in favor of more housing began to spread in Kingston, Starodaj pointed out that the office he holds was only created in 2020. The rezoning process kicked off in November 2021.

Starodaj hopes that the plan will serve as a model across New York.

“We can be a leader and show other communities what’s possible,” he said. “We’re not the only ones in the state with a housing crisis.”

Tax the Hamptons?

Long Island’s East End, home to the tony Hamptons and the bucolic North Fork, is also struggling with a severe housing shortage.

That might seem incongruous to many New Yorkers who see the East End’s five towns as the place that New York City’s rich flee to in summer to relax at their second homes.

But for the roughly 100,000 year-round residents, record-high home prices and a dire shortage of affordable housing are an existential threat. Schools are struggling to hire teachers and staff. Residents with medical emergencies have to wait over an hour for EMTs because local teams can’t find volunteers. Even the 1 percent are feeling the effects, as the lack of housing for working class people in the Hamptons means that ritzy boutiques and restaurants struggle to find workers who live within commuting distance.

“We need to start moving in the direction of taking care of people in our community,” said Mike Daly, founder of East End YIMBY, a group that advocates for housing construction and affordable housing. “It’s all fun and games until you can’t get your lobster salad.”

On November 8, locals will vote on one proposed response: a half-percent tax on high-value home sales. The money would go to a fund reserved for affordable housing projects or financial assistance for first-time homebuyers.

If all four towns holding referendums approve the tax, it would likely raise at least $20 million a year, according to Assemblymember Fred Thiele, a Democrat who represents the East End in the state legislature and sponsored the state law that created the referendums. Towns could also increase the amount of cash immediately available by borrowing money backed by future tax revenues.

“If this passes it will be the most important tool in the toolbox that towns have for affordable housing and allow them to increase their efforts by a factor of three or four,” said Thiele, who chairs the Assembly’s local government committee.

Referendums will be held in East Hampton, Shelter Island, Southampton, and Southold. The town of Riverhead was eligible to hold a referendum, but the town board declined to, arguing that Riverhead is already building enough affordable housing.

Governor Kathy Hochul signed Thiele’s bill in October 2021. That was a departure from her predecessor: The legislature passed a nearly identical bill in 2019, but then-Governor Andrew Cuomo vetoed it over opposition to new taxes.

There’s no public polling on the referendums, but Shelter Island resident Elizabeth Hanley, who plans to vote yes, thinks there’s broad support for them. “I’ve given out nearly 200 ‘Vote Yes’ yard signs and put in an order for another 100,” she said.

Still, some locals are opposed, and discussion at public meetings can be intense. “I actually won’t do community housing meetings unless there’s a court officer there because it’s been so volatile,” Hanley said.

Shelter Island resident Bob Kohn, who plans to vote no, told New York Focus he’s concerned about Shelter Island’s limited supply of freshwater and that new residents could add to the tax burden.

“You don’t want to have much more [housing] on Shelter Island because of the nitrate [contamination] and the water problems that we already have,” Kohn told New York Focus. (Shelter Island residents draw all of their water from wells. The town’s current housing plan, published in September, cites lack of fresh water as a factor that will limit further development, but not prevent it entirely.)

Still, Kohn said, Shelter Island will benefit if the other towns — which are connected to Suffolk County’s water system — vote yes.