The HTHC believes that a strong community has a variety of housing choices that allows the citizens of Huntington to stay in Huntington throughout their lives. Many of us grew up in our parents’ single family homes, but when we got our first jobs, we wanted to move out, often to apartments. Many of us again wanted our own single-family home or duplex when we started a family, and some when we grew older after our children moved out, preferring a low-maintenance apartment lifestyle, or we wanted to remain in our home with an accessory dwelling unit to help them pay our taxes. All of us should be able to do all of this in Huntington.
Most of the town land now is devoted to single family homes, parks, and historical districts. The single-family home developments should remain as is, we should cherish our historical districts, and we should preserve as much park space as possible, both to enjoy and to help preserve the quality of the groundwater.
Where feasible, all land within 0.5 miles of a train station should be zoned for a higher density to foster walkable communities and the use of mass transit.
When we build all the offices in Melville, all the shops and restaurants at the mall or in big boxes, and all the housing spread out, it is no surprise there is a lot of traffic. New development should try whenever possible to have places to live, work, and play closer together. For example, if the Melville office buildings also had apartments, restaurants, and grocery stores, people could conduct much of their lives in that area without even getting into a car.
with a couple exceptions. For example, in Melville, where many of the office buildings are four stories, the zoning should be for three stories with a fourth story allowed as long as there is a community benefit, like an increased percentage of affordable housing, or by building and maintaining a park.
As per current town law, those affordable units can be somewhere else in the same school district as long as they are built first, but rules like the land-preservation law used to build condos on golf courses should be subject to the affordability rules.
The town should push the County for sewers on these corridors if they do not already have them. The corridors would be the entire lengths of 25A, route 110, Jericho Turnpike, New York Avenue, Deer Park Avenue, Commack Road, and the area covered by the original MEC plan in Melville. The area 1-2 blocks from these roads should allow for shops, offices and apartments. These are a small percentage of town land.
We must expand access to sewers, and we must carefully assess each new development to ensure we do not overburden the water table.
