Summit: Great need for LI housing options

The need is great on Long Island for affordable housing and a range of housing options beyond the single-family home, said many participants at the first Suffolk County Housing Summit Wednesday.

Some lamented resistance to affordable housing by many residents, even as some complained about the region's high housing costs.

"Housing issues have been at the forefront of regional concerns for years now," said David Calone, chairman of the Suffolk County Planning Commission, "and yet the problem is a stubborn one."

Calone, who is also president and chief executive of Babylon-based Jove Equity Partners, a venture capital firm, presided over the daylong summit at Stony Brook University's Wang Center that attracted about 170 people.

"When kids are coming out of college or newly married they don't have that first step in the housing market" on Long Island, Calone said in an interview. "If they take that first step in New York City or Washington, D.C., or North Carolina, chances are good they are going to stay in those places and not come back here." He said the county also needed to enhance its sewer capacity to handle more multifamily housing.

Long Island's challenge, Calone and others said, is to create a housing mix that meets the needs of a changing population.

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Mark Lesko said there was often reflexive opposition to affordable housing. He urged large employers to pressure local governments for affordable housing for their workforce.

The university president, Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr., said the lack of such housing was an impediment to recruiting young professors and graduate students who don't earn high salaries.

There's a "fundamental mismatch between the needs of people and the housing that is built," said Constantine Kontokosta, vice chairman of the county planning commission and director of New York University's Center for the Sustainable Built Environment.

He said 85 percent of the housing built is for families, while 25 percent of residents live alone.

Peter Elkowitz, president and chief executive of the Long Island Housing Partnership, said almost half of Suffolk's population earned less than $75,000 a year.

Many households can't afford the down payment on a home with a median price of $308,000, he said, adding that there aren't enough rental units on the Island and rents are high.

Elkowitz said solutions included down-payment assistance programs, and attractive designs of multifamily units that contradict the "stereotype" of 1960s-style housing projects.