Melville Plan Offers Affordable Housing Opportunities

At the  June 23rd Huntington Housing Coalition General Membership meeting, we announced an opportunity for affordable housing that shows great promise.  Responding to the Huntington 2020 Master Plan’s call for development of an integrated land-use plan for the  Melville Corridor, the Town hired a  company that, with community input, developed a Melville Employment Center plan suggesting re-zoning that would shift the area from exclusive commercial to mixed use, including the possible creation of 495 residential units. In the past several weeks, we have met with Supervisor Frank Petrone and then with Huntington staff who helped develop the plan.  In our conversation with Supervisor Petrone, we pointed out that the current Huntington Homes Law  requires a 20% affordable housing set aside ONLY when a residential property is downzoned – meaning it is rezoned for higher density, say from one acre to multi-family housing.  The Law does not apply when a property is rezoned from commercial to mixed use that includes residential.  Supervisor Petrone agreed with us that the Law could be amended so that the affordable housing requirement would apply in such situations, such as the Melville plan. Last night we received a unanimous vote at the General Membership meeting for our Coalition to move forward advocating for this change in the Huntington Homes Law. We are currently in discussion with Town officials about language that might be used in the amendment.  We are also planning a meeting  with Town officials and other stakeholders to discuss the inclusion of affordable family housing in the Melville plan.   This is one of the most important affordable housing developments that we have seen. Here is the link to the current edition of the LI Business News cover story on the Melville plan http://libn.com/2016/06/24/melville-makeover/ and here is the link  to the plan itself: www.huntingtonny.gov/mec

We will keep you informed as the Melville process goes forward.  As of now, we will not have a General Membership meeting in July.  Our next General Membership meeting will be at 6:30PM on Monday, September 26th at the Dolan Family Health Center.