United Way Forum Highlights the Affordable Housing Squeeze in Greenwich

“It’s difficult because of the cost of our real estate. Our Affordable Housing Task Force is working with developers and attorneys. The gap is in the money. We have to figure out how to cross that bridge. There isn’t state money coming. We’re low in the queue.”

– Margarita Alban, Planning & Zoning Commission chair

Toward that end, Alban said two initiatives were under way. One is to seek a greater amount of money for the housing authority who are willing to oversee new construction of Affordable housing.

“We’ve asked the Board of Estimate and Taxation if they would consider the town lending money to the housing authority. It’s a cost free idea and it helps the housing authority move forward.”

Second, Alban said the task force was looking at the example of New Canaan where there is a fee for building permits to create a trust fund for Affordable housing.

In addition to the fees the Town collects, people are able to donate to the fund.

Alban said there were other ideas being considered to expand the concept of accessory units.

“Our accessory units are restricted to affordable and seniors,” Alban said, adding, “The commission is talking about opening that up so you can have an accessory unit for anybody. There are trade offs though. They’ll go market rate if you don’t restrict them.”

“We’ve talked about at least opening it up so you can create units for the disabled,” she added.

Mr. Ghio suggested housing vouchers offered a way to provide affordable rentals without new construction.

“It’s using existing units, not new construction, and there are other incremental ways such as ADUs, accessory apartments, or even creating internal accessory apartments from larger single family homes that won’t even impact the footprint of town in terms of what you see from the outside,” Ghio said.

“We don’t want to think we need 1,000 units – so that is X number of apartment buildings,” he said. “There’s a lot of ways to skin the cat.”

“We don’t want to glue ourselves to the 10% that the State mandates. You have to do what’s right for your town,” Alban said.

“We are proposing an inclusionary zoning regulation that will require new multi family developments to set aside 20% of their units as Affordable, but that percentage might change. We think this is key. We’re giving incentives to developers, and we are discussing that with them.”

Alban said anyone interested was invited to attend Greenwich’s affordable housing task force meetings. The meetings are posted on the Town’s website.