Single-family homes or apartments? Romaine, Piccirillo disagree on Suffolk County affordable housing

The surging cost of homes across Suffolk County has turned affordable housing into one of the county’s most pressing challenges.

For government leaders, the question has become how to make owning or renting a home more affordable while preserving the area’s suburban character.

The debate has exposed a divide between two of Suffolk’s Republican leaders: County Executive Edward P. Romaine, who has publicly supported some large developments, and Presiding Officer Anthony Piccirillo (R-Holtsville), who has argued that government policies and subsidies are part of the problem.

Piccirillo described an “ideological battle” brewing over the county’s future direction during a May 19 capital budget working group meeting. His stance on housing — opposing high-density development and rentals while advocating for single-family homes — puts him at odds with housing advocates and other lawmakers who view those as part of the solution to what the county has labeled a “crisis.”

Romaine has cited boosting affordable housing as a priority since the start of his administration and has publicly supported developments such as the 262-unit apartment complex under construction in Patchogue called The Carriage House.

“I will continue to support housing,” Romaine told Newsday. “People need places to live that are affordable.”

In an interview, Piccirillo said: “We all want affordable housing. But it’s how do you get there and what’s affordable?”

He said the county legislature’s goal is to “break some of the government bureaucracy and the red tape” that create barriers for builders to put up the types of homes people want.

“Homeownership is the pathway to the middle class,” he said.

While housing approvals rest largely with towns and villages, the county offers several programs that can increase supply through land acquisition, incentives to developers and assistance for low-income renters.

Adding a diverse housing stock, which can include townhouses, multifamily apartments and accessory dwelling units as examples, is critical to addressing the problem and providing adequate housing for people at various stages of life, housing experts said.

Ian Wilder, executive director of the fair-housing nonprofit Long Island Housing Services, said his agency fields calls every day from people seeking affordable places to live.

“Can the county solve this by themselves? No,” he said. “But the county can be a piece of that.”

The median sale price in Suffolk reached $750,000 in June, a 7.1% increase from the same month a year earlier, Newsday previously reported. The median sale price was $600,000 as recently as January 2024.

The median monthly asking rent in Suffolk County was $2,943, Newsday reported in June, citing data from the commercial real estate data platform CoStar.

Affordable units

The county has provided about $35 million over the last decade through a loan program to support the creation of about 1,800 affordable units, according to figures in the county’s latest capital budget. Leah Jefferson, director of affordable housing and community development for the county, told legislators another 499 units are “in the pipeline.”

Piccirillo described that spending as “wrongheaded” during the meeting and said he believed the money was not solving the problem as rents continue to increase.

“People don’t want to move to Long Island to live in five-story apartment buildings,” he said in an interview. “They want yards. They want single-family homes. They want neighborhoods, good schools, and the government needs to make that easier.”

He said he plans to introduce a pair of bills soon geared toward shifting money from rentals to single-family homes.

“The real issue is the barriers that government has created in building single-family homes that are affordable because of a lot of different rules that were put in place in the ‘80s and the ‘90s that you can’t build single-family homes on less than half an acre,” he said. “So I’m really looking to repeal that.”

Piccirillo has been an outspoken critic of industrial development agencies that offer tax breaks to developers. He said those tax breaks negatively impact existing homeowners.

Housing experts said building affordable housing is untenable without some government support.

“I’ve never seen anybody show that building affordable housing is taking unfair advantage of the public,” Wilder said.

Piccirillo over the last two years has been the most consistent legislator to vote against resolutions tied to housing, records show. At the June 2 meeting he was the lone legislator to vote against three resolutions that helped support projects in Water Mill and Center Moriches.

“I’m not going to lend my vote to something that I don’t agree with on the economics front,” he said.

Last year, he did not cast a vote for a bill that created a new housing incentive to help recruit and retain volunteer firefighters and EMS personnel. He stepped away from his seat when then-Presiding Officer Kevin McCaffrey read the bill’s title. He returned to his seat a few minutes after the bill was approved.

At a bill signing ceremony a few weeks later, Romaine said: “I look forward to signing this bill, but I will say that does not stop our efforts for affordable housing. It only starts the beginning of our efforts.”

Piccirillo said he didn’t recall why he needed to step away. He said his issue with that legislation is not about first responders, but rather setting aside units for too many specific groups in new housing developments that receive county funding.

“Mechanically, it doesn’t work,” he said.

Romaine said in an interview that there are 18 legislators with different opinions and that his job is “to try to get everyone moving the same direction.”

“I know the presiding officer has a different view [on housing],” he said. “He doesn’t want Suffolk to become Queens. And I agree with that.”

He said the key is finding appropriate locations for new housing and the right developers. He cited developer Tritec Real Estate’s development of Station Yards in Ronkonkoma as one example of success. He said he also supports the $92 million Matinecock Court affordable housing development in East Northport.

“You’ve got to work with the local community, your local village and your local towns,” he said.

New approaches

Lawrence Levy, executive dean at Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, said there’s consensus among members of both parties, as well as business and environmental organizations, that Long Island lacks adequate affordable housing and doesn’t have the space to meet demand “the old-fashioned way”: single-family houses on a typical suburban plot of land.

There’s been an increase in mid-rise apartments buildings in established downtowns that are buoyed by state funding, he said. The demand, he said, remains high.

“Any official who chooses to be an obstructionist is doing more damage to the economic and social fabric of the region than they’re helping their political career,” Levy said.

Richard Koubek, who was the chairman of a Welfare to Work Commission that lawmakers dissolved at the end of last year, said part of the commission’s focus was on affordable housing. Its final annual report, released last year, reiterated a call for a countywide summit to bring together stakeholders at county and local levels and begin a “conversation about how we can have a countywide approach, which we don’t really have,” Koubek said.

“There are certain things that certain members of the legislature do not want to hear, starting with the fact that most of our towns have exclusionary zoning laws that make it very, very difficult for a builder of affordable housing to get approval,” he said.

Legis. Rebecca Sanin (D-Huntington Station) said affordability remains the top issue among constituents. She said affordable housing is often pitted against environmental protections and the preservation of open space.

She said both goals are important and can be accomplished simultaneously.

“We need to be able to have workforce housing so that our hospitals and our schools and our institutions that we value as Long Islanders are preserved and kept as high quality,” she said.

By Joe Werkmeister

joe.werkmeister@newsday.com

Joe Werkmeister joined Newsday in 2022 and covers Suffolk County government and politics. He is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University and previously worked as the editor of two North Fork community newspapers.

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