Affordable Housing, County Mandates: is Federal Intervention Far Behind

There's a controversial new catch with federal  Community Development Block Grants: since Westchester County distributes the money, it's attached new strings.

If towns and villages want the grant money for projects, they'll have to agree to give the county the first pick of property within town borders, and they'll have to agree to a "model zoning ordinance"—legal-speak that means towns would have to make sure 10 percent of homes count as affordable housing.

Scarsdale and Eastchester are among the towns whose demographics put them at the head of the list.

The pushback is fierce all over the county. Officials say they'll devise a plan in an upcoming summit to fight the county's new grant requirements and present a unified front to Westchester. 

Scarsdale Mayor Carolyn Stevens made plans to attend the summit even before she was able to study the newest changes in the county's latest attempt to satisfy federal officials that it has a real plan for providing affordable housing throughout Westchester. 

"The amended plan was released while I was away and I have not had time to review it or speak with our Village Attorney about it," she said today.

Port Chester Mayor Dennis Pilla noted New York is a home rule state, and local matters like zoning have always been under the control of town boards and councils.

"That's the way we'd like to keep it," he said.

For its part, Westchester County is between a federal court and a hard place. 

The Anti-Discrimination Center sued the county last year, and a federal judge ruled Westchester had "utterly failed" to provide what the court calls "fair housing." The court ruled Westchester didn't provide fair housing despite taking federal money -- not only did the county not build enough affordable homes, but it failed to follow rules that say those units must be built in otherwise ethnically monochrome neighborhoods.

Westchester has a dozen towns where African Americans make up fewer than one percent of the population, and another eight towns where they're less than two percent of the population, said Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center. But according to recent census estimates, African Americans are 14 percent of the overall population here.

"The county is just characterized by racial segregation," Gurian said. "And there's been an unwillingness to recognize that."

Westchester has had a year to comply with the federal court order to build 750 fair housing units, and on Aug. 9 it submitted its third plan after the previous two had been rejected. One former county plan involved building fair housing units on a street with a psychiatric facility and a veteran's administration, but no homes. But the language in the consent decree is specific -- the county is required to build affordable housing, and it's required to put most of the units in uniformly white towns and neighborhoods.

Those uniformly white neighborhoods are in towns such as Scarsdale and Eastchester, which "could certainly expect" to see new developments as the county looks to satisfy the federal consent decree, Gurian said.

At the heart of the issue is what the court calls "desegregation potential," and Gurian said that potential can't be reached with homes "if you don't put them in a place with the lowest concentration of African Americans and Latinos."

The county is waiting to hear what happens next. 

It's unlikely the federal monitor assigned to oversee the court order will allow Westchester to go back to the drawing board for a fourth time, which means the next plan might be one mandated by the court. Gurian said he faults both former County Executive Andy Spano, and current honcho Rob Astorino, describing them—and county lawmakers—as uncooperative. But by mid September, their time may have run out. 

In Scarsdale, the affordable housing issue was part of the recent discussion about revising the village's Comprehensive Plan.  

The final draft of the plan recommends the village "Consider permitting various types of residential development such as age-restricted or workforce housing in mixed use buildings in selected locations in the Village Center. Such housing units would be sold or rented at price points typically affordable to households in key community service sectors, including police and schoolteachers, as well as younger and older citizens and those attracted to transit-oriented development." 

"Scarsdale does not prohibit it, our zoning is open to it; it's coming up with a location and financing piece that can work," said Village Planner Liz Marrinan.

In the meantime, Stevens, Pilla and a dozen or so of their colleagues will try to figure out how to get grant money that's been promised to their towns—without handing over local authority to White Plains.