Five in 2025: Options That Every Westchester City, Town, and Village Can Take to Address the Housing Shortage
Westchester County remains in a housing shortage which threatens the health of our economy and the vibrancy of our communities. The lack of adequate housing is choking businesses and nonprofits of local talent and causing our communities to miss out on additional property taxes, state and federal aid, and other economic activity. The housing shortage is being felt most sharply by seniors, millennials, people of color, middle class families and others looking for affordable options, as well as those who serve the public interest such as teachers, police, fire personnel, and local government workers who can no longer afford to live where they work. This is truly an “all hands-on deck” moment.
But this is a problem that can be solved – and there are many different ways to solve it!
If every community in Westchester County increased its housing stock by just 1% a year over the next 5 years, it would generate 17,000 new units of badly needed housing. This is clearly achievable. In fact, several communities in Westchester are already on track to increase their housing supply by 5-7% in that time. If we learn from the cities, towns, and villages who are already moving forward, we can build the housing we need – to everyone’s benefit!
The Welcome Home Westchester campaign strongly urges our local leaders to promote much-needed housing in a way that makes sense for their individual communities. Not every community needs to do the same things, but every community should do something.
Welcome Home Westchester calls on every city, town, and village in Westchester to pick at least one option below.
1. Produce a Housing Action Plan.
Between the available data from the 2019 Westchester County Housing Needs Assessment and the 2020 Census, communities have all the data they need to develop a housing action plan that is specific to local needs and considers unique conditions and characteristics. The plan should have adequate public input and set out priorities for how that community intends to be part of the solution in addressing our housing shortage, including promoting affordability by reducing barriers to new housing supply. Not every type of housing makes sense in every community, but there is a broad variety of ways to move forward — “missing middle” housing, duplexes, accessory dwelling units, townhouses, garden apartments, senior housing, transit-oriented development, and downtown mixed-use sites that combine retail and housing — such that every community can be part of the solution.
2. Create a fast-track environmental review for sustainable, energy-efficient housing and transit-oriented development.
The land use review and approval process can be complicated, time consuming, and expensive. Even modest, sustainable housing projects are often subjected to lengthy and unpredictable reviews under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR). Whether through inefficiency or local intransigence, these reviews can take months to years, sometimes without legitimacy. This is true even for projects which would have a clear net positive impact on the environment, including infill housing, transit-oriented development, or projects utilizing advanced stormwater management, solar panels, geothermal or air source heat pumps, or other clean or green technologies. Oftentimes delaying or denying such projects would have an even worse impact on achieving our climate and sustainability goals than moving forward. Adding time, red tape, and cost to the approval process is one of many factors that make housing so expensive to build in Westchester, creating further barriers to affordability.
We call on communities to create a Green Fast Track for housing that includes climate-friendly features that would guarantee an expedient timeframe for priority projects, provided the applicant furnishes material in a timely manner.
3. Promote Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) and Transit-Oriented Development (TODs).
Many Westchester cities, towns, and villages have passed ordinances to allow for accessory dwelling units as a way to provide more affordable housing options while supplementing incomes to middle-class and senior homeowners. These can be garage conversions, backyard cottages, converted attics or basement apartments — any space on an existing lot that can be repurposed into a fully separate living place. With adequate regulations, ADUs are typically unnoticeable from the street, and they do not noticeably transform the neighborhood character of a single-family exclusive zone.
Other Westchester communities have actively promoted transit-oriented development. TODs result in less dependence on cars, more use of public transit, more walkable and revitalized downtown centers, and entice small businesses and jobs to locate near our transit hubs. Communities with transit stations should create their own multifamily zoning districts within walking distance from these stations.
4. Establish a “Core Curriculum” for Volunteer Land Use Board Member Training
State law requires land use board members to undergo a few hours of training each year on a topic of their choice. However, there is no set of suggested topics or “core curriculum” for new volunteers to follow. We call on each municipality to pass a resolution establishing a “core curriculum” to understand the housing shortage in Westchester, how we got here, and how their decisions could help or hurt closing the housing gap. Each new land use board member ought to undergo two specific trainings within their first year serving on the board: first, a training on the community profile for their city, town, or village, as outlined in the 2019 Westchester County Housing Needs Assessment, including which of their neighbors struggle with housing affordability; and second,
a historical review to promote awareness of how the tools of zoning, planning, and land use have been intentionally or unintentionally contributing to exclusionary zoning and residential segregation.
5. Use the New State-Provided Tools and Become a Pro-Housing Community
Last year, the state established the Pro-Housing Communities Program to reward cities, towns, and villages who have chosen to be part of the solution to the housing shortage by committing to grow their housing stock by 1% per year. Communities that show progress toward building the housing we need will receive special consideration for important state grant programs like the Downtown Revitalization Initiative, Mid Hudson Momentum Fund, and others. They can also apply to receive infrastructure funding to support planning, stormwater impacts, water, traffic mitigation, school impacts or other projects to their housing growth and improve the lives of existing residents. The state has also given the authority to cities, towns, and villages to pass a property tax credit for homeowners who are building new accessory dwelling units on their properties, where already allowed and a new property tax incentive to encourage the production of affordable multifamily housing. Taken together, the two programs would incentivize builders and developers to not just build housing but affordable housing, and then reward the municipalities (and existing residents) with state funding for achieving those goals – a true win-win scenario.