Long Island Business News OpEd: Hunter Gross

There is a sentence heard over and over across Huntington:

“My kids could never afford to live here.”

It is said by parents whose children grew up here but cannot afford to return. By young adults who would like to build their lives near their families but see homeownership slipping further out of reach. By older residents who want to downsize without leaving the community they have spent decades calling home.

We acknowledge the problem constantly.

The harder part is accepting what solving it requires.

On Sept. 15, the Huntington Town Board will hold a public hearing on Cornerstone Melville, a proposal for 168 new homes, 20 percent of which would be affordable.

The Huntington Township Housing Coalition strongly supports the proposal, and we encourage residents who care about Huntington’s future to make their voices heard.

Because this debate raises a question that Huntington eventually has to answer:

If we are unwilling to build housing in Melville, where exactly are we willing to build it?

Melville is one of the town’s most significant commercial and employment centers. This is not a proposal to drop a large apartment complex into the middle of an established single-family neighborhood. It is an opportunity to put new homes in a part of Huntington where growth can be planned intentionally.

That is precisely what responsible housing policy should look like.

For too long, our region has treated every individual housing proposal as though rejecting it carries no consequences.

It does.

The consequence is a housing supply that fails to keep pace with the needs of the people who want to live here. It is young people leaving. It is seniors with too few options to downsize. It is workers commuting greater distances to jobs in our community. And it is families competing for an increasingly scarce and expensive supply of homes.

Opposing a housing development does not make the need for housing disappear. It simply means the homes don’t get built.

And after enough projects are rejected, delayed or reduced, we arrive exactly where Long Island finds itself today.

There will be legitimate questions about any development of this size. Traffic matters. Infrastructure matters. Environmental impacts matter. The details of affordability matter.

Those questions deserve serious answers.

But scrutiny cannot become an endless search for a perfect housing proposal that will never exist.

If every project must create housing without adding residents, generate affordability without adding density, produce economic benefits without changing anything and satisfy every objection before a single shovel enters the ground, we have not created a standard for responsible development.

We have created a formula for building nothing.

Cornerstone would not solve Huntington’s housing challenges by itself. No 168-unit development could.

That isn’t the point.

The point is that solving a housing shortage requires actually building homes — project by project, neighborhood by neighborhood, in places where additional housing makes sense.

And the affordability component matters. Twenty percent of 168 homes means real housing opportunities for households that otherwise may have none in Huntington. Those aren’t percentages on a zoning application. They are future neighbors.

This debate is ultimately about more than Cornerstone.

It is about what kind of Huntington we want to leave behind.

A community does not remain vibrant simply because its buildings remain unchanged. Communities survive because generations of people can continue participating in them.

Our children should have a realistic chance to build lives near the communities that raised them. Our older neighbors should have options that allow them to remain here. The people who work in Huntington should have a greater opportunity to live in Huntington.

We cannot guarantee those outcomes for everyone.

But we can stop making them harder by refusing to create the housing choices they require.

On Sept. 15, residents will have an opportunity to tell the town board what they believe Huntington’s future should look like.

Those who support Cornerstone should show up and say so.

Because public hearings are often dominated by the people who oppose change. The people who will someday need these homes may not be in the room.

We should speak for them too.

And as Huntington considers Cornerstone Melville, there is one question worth keeping at the center of the conversation:

If not 168 homes here, then where? And if not now, then when?

Hunter Gross is president of the Huntington Township Housing Coalition.