Officials Release Long Island Affordable Housing Study

AMITYVILLE, NY - Officials gathered in the courtyard of Liberty Village, a development built for homeless veterans, in Amityville last month to announce the results of a two-year study on the need for affordable housing on Long Island.

During the event a resident of the complex, 64-year-old Dean Jones described his experience
being homeless and expressed the importance of advertising affordable housing.

“It’s a kept secret,” he said of low-income housing on Long Island.

Before moving to Liberty Village in 2016, he lived at the United Veterans Beacon House in Bay
Shore.

During his time there, Jones said his biggest issue was the non-profit wanted him to sign up for
one of the programs they offered, such as groups to help recovering drug addicts.

“I said to them ‘I don’t need a program, I’m only homeless,’” Jones, a former drug addict who
has been clean for 38 years, explained. “I don’t have a drug problem, I don’t have a mental
problem, I got all my facilities, I just need a place to live and they didn’t take that into account.”

According to the results of the study released by the LI Coalition for the Homeless, there were
3,868 homeless people on Long Island as of January 2018. There are 2.8 million residents on Long Island, including 121,897 veterans, according to 2017 U.S. Census data.

Presiding Officer DuWayne Gregory is also working to help create affordable housing in his
district, which includes Amityville.

He claims the problem is that while the price of housing is going up, the number of higher-
paying jobs in fields such as finance or technology is decrease.

There are other areas that need complexes like Liberty Village such as Smithtown and areas in
the South Fork, according to Gregory.

“We have to do better in making sure that every community has the opportunity for people
who would benefit from these types of projects to live there,” he said.

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