Southold housing code overhaul heads to public input at Town Board meeting

Residents will finally get to weigh in Tuesday on Southold’s years-long effort to overhaul its housing code as the North Fork’s affordability crisis deepens.

A major part of the proposal slated to be discussed at the Town Board session would identify hundreds of properties where qualifying housing projects could use special affordability rules while keeping their existing underlying zoning.

The town’s updated parcel summary lists 537 properties in the proposed Community Housing Overlay District, including 153 in Mattituck and 121 in Southold hamlet. The list identifies properties where those rules could potentially be used. It does not represent approved developments or a count of homes that would be built.

Properties within the overlay would retain their current zoning. A developer seeking to use the special provisions would have to meet the town’s affordability and income requirements, and projects with three or more homes would require Planning Board site-plan approval.

Under the draft overlay rules, qualifying projects could include up to 12 homes per acre. That density is already permitted under Southold’s existing Affordable Housing District, so the proposal would not itself increase the current maximum density for those projects.

The larger change is where the rules could apply. The proposed overlay would replace the existing Affordable Housing District and establish designated properties where qualifying projects could seek to use the town’s community housing provisions without changing the property’s underlying zoning.

The town is also trying to simplify rules that are now scattered throughout different sections of the Town Code. The proposal would move many of the general requirements governing community housing into one new section, called Chapter 112.

“So, these general provisions are new, but we’ll see that I reference Chapter 34,” Community Development Project Supervisor Andrea Sullivan said. “A lot of the language from Chapter 34 was taken and was placed here.”

The Code Committee reviewed those changes at its Sept. 23 meeting, along with revisions to the town’s housing and preservation fund rules and the proposed overlay district.

The housing work is one piece of a much larger zoning overhaul that has been underway for years. In April, officials abandoned plans to rewrite the entire zoning code at once and shifted to tackling it in sections after Planning Director Heather Lanza said the comprehensive approach had proved impractical because of limited staff time.

Housing has since moved to the front of that work. During his State of the Town address in August, Supervisor Al Krupski said the goal was to complete the new code by the end of this year or early next year.

The changes are being considered as housing costs continue to reshape life on the North Fork. The median price of a single-family home reached $999,000 at the end of 2025, while recent Suffolk Times reporting found that high housing costs are making it harder for local schools, hospitals and volunteer fire departments to recruit and retain workers.

Declining enrollment has also put pressure on some North Fork school districts to consider consolidation as fewer young families can afford to remain in the area.

Southold has meanwhile collected more than $8.5 million through the voter-approved Community Housing Fund. Officials have said some of the housing-code changes now under review must be completed before the town can fully put that money to use. The East End fund has collected more than $100 million overall.

Separately, officials are developing a first-time homebuyer assistance program with a proposed purchase-price ceiling of $999,999. Under the draft plan, eligible buyers could receive assistance covering up to 18% of a home’s purchase price.

Later steps in the code overhaul would address accessory apartments, also known as accessory dwelling units or ADUs. The town’s draft says the rules governing accessory apartments vary throughout the code and need to be made more consistent.

Other planned changes would reconcile rental-permit provisions now found in different sections of the code and add apartments as a permitted principal use in the Hamlet Business zoning district.

Revisions to the Sanitary Flow Credits and Subdivisions chapters would remove obsolete references and make those sections consistent with the new community housing rules.

The town’s timeline does not list specific completion dates for those later steps.

The public information session begins at 6 p.m. Sept. 29 at Town Hall, 53095 Main Road. Drafts and maps showing proposed overlay locations are available on the town’s zoning update website. Residents can also attend remotely using the Zoom information in the town’s meeting notice.

The town expects at least two more Code Committee meetings, as well as another public input meeting, likely after all of the code is completed.