Remember when Long Island Republicans rejected Gov. Kathy Hochul’s housing plan, arguing that local officials should be trusted to allow the development that communities need?
Huntington Supervisor Ed Smyth is living up to that promise. Huntington Council member Brooke Lupinacci is breaking it.
Smyth supports a transit-oriented apartment project in Melville. Lupinacci opposes it — and is running against Smyth to take his job.
Why should anyone care about a race in Huntington, which has just 0.7 percent of Nassau and Suffolk counties’ population? Because the election result will likely influence whether other Long Island politicians embrace or reject development.
Long Island is a poster child for New York’s housing affordability crisis: Demand to live there is high, but the supply of homes is low. About 89 percent of land is zoned for single-family — meaning no apartments, and often not even accessory dwelling units. Two-family homes are only permitted on 8.5 percent and three-family or more on 3.6 percent.
Single-family homes are 83 percent of Long Island’s housing stock, versus 50 percent in Westchester County. Because detached houses fill seemingly every lot on the peninsula’s 1,200 square miles of land, not even 3 million people live on it. Huntington’s population is virtually the same as it was in 1980.
Given the public investment in the Long Island Rail Road, the towns with tracks have an unwritten obligation to allow more housing. The governor tried to put that in writing in 2023, but was beaten back. Opponents rallied behind the slogan “Local control, not Hochul control.”
Hochul came back last year with an incentive-based housing plan, which passed. Huntington has answered the call with a proposed overlay district to allow apartments near its LIRR station in Melville. Lupinacci was the only council member to vote against it, Newsday reported.
She seems straight out of central casting for NIMBYs, including a website with the classically dramatic title “Save Huntington.” It says she “fought to protect our suburban quality of life by opposing the current Supervisor’s effort to build thousands of high-density rental apartments,” which she claims would raise taxes by over $20 million.
Whatever school tax revenue was spent on Lupinacci’s education was not enough, because the plan allows no more than 1,500 apartments, which is not “thousands.”
Her “suburban quality of life,” by the way, includes public schools with well-paid teachers, manicured sports fields and other amenities, paid for in part by local taxes. It’s quite hypocritical to praise that quality of life but not want to pay for it, especially when the state picks up much of the tab.
Some Long Island communities have done the right thing. The Village of Westbury just approved Manhattan-based Alpine Development’s $97 million, 187-unit project by its train station.
Elected officials tend to cater to their loudest constituents. Town of Hempstead leaders, for example, approved town-center development by the LIRR station in Lawrence, then rescinded it when locals stormed the castle with torches and pitchforks. (Heatherwood, the developer whose $154 million project was sabotaged by the reversal, is suing.)
The politician who led that flip-flop, Bruce Blakeman, was then elected Nassau County supervisor. If Huntington voters similarly reward Lupinacci’s short-sighted pandering, Long Island will surely see more of it.
Read more
Hochul’s housing plan: Reality check for propagandists
Death of a housing plan: Who’s to blame?
Developer sues Hempstead after zoning repeal killed $154M project
