Guest Spot: Worsening housing crisis impacts us all
Once upon a time, Greenport was a source of inexpensive housing. Boarding houses and cottages alongside stately Victorians became available for low-wage tenants after World War II, as government boat-building contracts dried up and the engineers and carpenters moved away. The village economy then was tanking; now it is booming and we have a housing crisis.
How did we get here? We can’t say we weren’t warned. A decade ago, the Long Island Index project surveyed residents’ perceptions of their housing situations and found that many respondents planned to leave their hometowns because of high rents or mortgage payments and the lack of homes they could afford. As the North Fork became a destination of choice for financially comfortable people enjoying the farms and beaches and participating in small-town affairs, investment was lacking for the nurses and clerks and housekeepers who made those choices attractive.
Now everyone is concerned. Even the leaders of important local institutions are wringing their hands. The heads of Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital and Peconic Landing joined Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi recently at a Times Review Talks forum to support workforce housing and bemoan the shortage of housing for employees that’s less than an hour’s commute from their workplaces. Our essential workers and their families are less worried about the long commutes than about finding safety and a welcoming community. Southold community relations coordinator Sonia Spar tells me that even third-graders are worried that their parents will lose their homes. During the forum, the Rev. Natalie Wimberley pointed out that the voices of her congregants were missing from the event because at that time of the day they were at work.
It is tempting to consider this problem a simple failure of supply meeting demand. But we are deluded if we think that the shortage of workforce housing is a naturally occurring outcome of market forces. Those at the top of the economic food chain are distorting the market, sometimes in ways that are cruel.
Short-term rentals on the North Fork obviously reduce the availability of houses that could be rented or sold to a family (or two). Renting to bachelorette parties or exhausted tech yuppies seeking a week’s respite is more profitable than leasing long-term to a village employee. More blatant consequences of the housing shortage should disturb us all. Here are some I have heard about within the past month.
One 20-year-old Peconic Landing worker was forced to move on a moment’s notice to accommodate her landlady’s renovation plans for a better class of tenant. Another story involved the expulsion of a woman who had lived in Greenport for 17 years with a large family that is now widely dispersed, forcing the woman’s two nephews to transfer to a faraway high school. In both cases, their rentals were monthto- month, with leases just a dream. Illegal evictions are common, I am told, and tenants are rarely adequately equipped to combat them.
It’s not just rentals, either. I have recently heard of negotiations for house purchases that were well underway when the owner took the house off the market, in one case because he had found a cash buyer and in another because he decided he wouldn’t sell to a Spanish-speaker.
On both South and North forks, we now see the daily trade parade of workers who cannot afford to live there but must serve those who do. It is time to face the fact that if we don’t invest in housing for everyone, we will be witnesses to a quiet class war over housing.
Ms. Gordon is a member of Greenport’s Zoning Board of Appeals and the village code committee.
