The need for more housing on Long Island is dire, but state laws, a lack of public education, and trends in population and economics have blocked progress, housing experts said on Thursday, March 13 at the Real Estate Institute of Long Island’s spring luncheon at the Heritage Club in Bethpage
“We’ve moved past the term housing emergencies we’ve moved to housing crisis,” managing partner for Terwilliger & Bartone Properties Anthony Bartone said.
Bartone was one of five panelists on Thursday, March 13, at the conference that drew hundreds to discuss Long Island’s struggling housing development.
Keith Law, the former president of the LIA and the executive vice president/partner of TRITEC, moderated the panel. He started by asking about the positives of housing development on Long Island.
Farmingdale Mayor Ralph Ekstrand talked about the success that Faringdale has had in creating new housing opportunities within the village. Brookhaven Town Supervisor Dan Panico then added the recent housing accomplishments within his communities.
Both Panico and Ekstrand said that they prefer people come to them first with housing plans for their areas.
“If our economy is going to grow, if we are going to keep people here, we recognize that we need to redevelop and we need to put housing where it makes sense, Panico said.”
Panico said the Town of Brookhaven got rid of its planning board in 2024 because he wanted elected officials to take responsibility for those type of decisions
Farmingdale Village holds meetings four Mondays a month where people can present their plans to the board. That is how Bartone was able to bring Farmingdale its first transit-oriented development project once the mayor was sworn into office.
“He looked at me and said, “approved,” and then he told me to get out,” Bartone said about his first housing plan for the village, which was met with laughter from the audience.
The positive sentiment shifted towards one of concern for housing development in the region.
“The capitalization of real estate in The U.S. is greater than the capitalization of the stock market,” said David Pennetta, executive managing director for the Long Island office of Cushman & Wakefield.
He said that there is also an education problem and that our elected officials don’t necessarily have any real good real estate experience.
Law then asked Cara Longworth, the vice president and regional director for Empire State development, about Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push for better housing opportunities on the island.
She said the region had lost nearly 100,000 people between the ages of 25 and 55 between 2009 and 2019 and that in the last 20 years, there have been 62,000 more jobs created on Long Island than housing units available.
Longworth said the governor has attempted to combat these statistics and has encouraged communities to further develop housing opportunities by “dangling a carrot.”
Municipalities can apply to become certified pro-housing communities to receive specialized funding from the state for development purposes.
One day after the luncheon, the governor’s office announced that Farmingdale Village, one of 17 certified pro-housing communities on Long Island, will receive $4.5 million from the NY Forward program for its downtown district.
Ekstrand said on Thursday that the pro-housing initiative has been “worth the effort.”
Panico said he hopes that trusted communities can have fewer strings attached to their state grant money so that things can be accomplished more quickly.
The Town of Brookhaven is listed as a certified pro-housing community and has two villages within its borders that also have that designation.
Longwood said that in 2023, each region in the state was asked to identify its biggest weakness—Long Island was the only region to say housing. Long Island was one of three regions to win a $10 million grant from the state to help address this issue.
Although Longwood had been leading a positive discussion about housing for communities, other panelists disagreed with the state’s efforts in the region.
“It’s tough when somebody who’s running the whole state, which is so diversified and different, is coming back and saying, here’s what you need and this is how you’re going to do it,” Pennetta said. “If you talk to some of the business leaders here, people here on the stage, it’s part of assembling that, not just getting the result of that study. The challenges here are so deep that it borders on being untenable.”
“The state is the root cause of most of the problems here on Long Island,” Panico said. “Nobody in charge with regard to making the laws in Albany listened to the people of Long Island.”
“I’ve put more thought into what color socks I’m wearing than some legislators put in the laws they passed,” Bartone said about laws that have made it difficult for contractors and developers to create new opportunities.
Bartone also said that his company recently signed a contract in Pennsylvania and away from Long Island. He said the decision was to “ensure the company’s survival.”
Panico said there needs to be “intelligent people steering the ship” and that using the land more efficiently can lead to more housing opportunities.
“There’s a general feeling that developers are greedy,” he said. “They want 30 units for an acre. They need to go out and explain the math to the community. We need to show why three units to an acre won’t pencil out. The math doesn’t lie.”
The panel spoke for well over an hour about the various ups and downs of Long Island’s housing problems. The governor’s budget for the next fiscal year is expected to be passed in the coming weeks, and this may provide further funding for local housing developments.
