Islip requires new apartments to have washers, dryers

Future apartments in Islip will be required to have in-unit washers and dryers, part of a new town policy meant to improve the standard of living for residents.

The new rule is stricter than those imposed by other government entities, however, and it has been criticized as a government overreach that could further inflate the cost of renting in town.

Islip's town board approved the policy change last month. It requires a washer and dryer be included in each dwelling unit within town zoning districts that allow for apartments. Those districts, collectively, also can allow dwellings ranging from some single-family homes to assisted living facilities.

The policy will apply only to new units and it doesn't include mention of special districts created for certain large-scale developments, but the town expects to impose the rule on those special projects as well, according to town spokeswoman Caroline Smith.

Islip’s planning and development commissioner, Ela Dokonal, said the policy was about providing what is “considered a dignity of living. You have the means to wash your clothes.”

“Imagine a mother with so many children. She needs to take all of the clothes, go to the laundromat to utilize the services, and shuffle the children,” she said at the Dec. 16 town board meeting. “It is, I would say, the comfort of the home to provide that [utility].”

A vote against: 'It trickles down'

Conservative Councilman John Lorenzo cast the sole vote against the policy. He raised concerns about the mandate harming small businesses such as laundromats by sapping their customer base, as well as its potential to increase rent prices by adding developer costs.

“It trickles down. It’s not going to impact [developers]. It’s going to impact the consumer at the end of the line,” he said, adding he was opposed to the policy in principle because “I don’t like when the government starts overreaching and mandating what people have to do.”

Islip’s new rules are more stringent than those New York State imposes on housing projects it subsidizes, which are required to have one washer and dryer for every 10 dwelling units or 20 bedrooms, according to the state Homes and Community Renewal agency’s 2025 design guidelines.

The two largest towns bordering Islip also do not have such requirements.

In Babylon, for example, the most similar code is one that applied specifically to senior apartments and requires one washer and dryer per 10 units, according to spokesman Ryan Bonner.

Brookhaven doesn’t have any such rules on the books, but Supervisor Dan Panico told Newsday via email “there have been zero apartment [or] condo complexes approved in more than two decades that do not include washers and dryers.”

Dokonal, Islip’s planning commissioner, said a lack of residential laundry facilities is more prevalent in Islip Town.

“We have met a lot of cases within the town where the landlords do not provide that kind of amenity, which leaves the residents to have to use outside-of-their-unit services for something that seems like a basic need,” she said at the meeting last month.

Overall board support

Islip’s three Republican town board members — James O’Connor, Michael McElwee and Supervisor Angie Carpenter — voted to pass the laundry facility policy. Democrat Jorge Guadron was absent.

Carpenter called the policy “remarkable” following Lorenzo’s criticisms at the meeting.

“It’s an easier, better quality of life to know that you have a washer and dryer in the unit. And it doesn’t have to be a fancy [machine]. I imagine they could [install] those dual units … the stackables,” Carpenter said.

O’Connor, whose term expires this month, told Newsday he “was pretty sympathetic” to Lorenzo’s criticism of the policy.

“Obviously, if it’s going to cost that much more to build units because you have to supply a washer and dryer to each unit, those costs are going to get passed right along to the person who’s living there,” O’Connor said of the policy’s potential impact on affordability.

He also cited Lorenzo’s argument that “if you’re going to put a washer and dryer in everybody's unit, then you’re going to kind of hurt the small mom-and-pop laundromats” that depend on residents to use those services.

“I think those are really good arguments,” said O’Connor, who explained he voted in favor of the policy because the critiques were brought up too late in the process, which began when the town board voted in November to call a public hearing to consider the code change.

“Had we had more time to think about it, talk about it, more time to deliberate from November to [Dec. 16], we probably could have come to some sort of an agreement,” O’Connor said.

By Sam Kmack

sam.kmack@newsday.com

Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.