Eight years after a settlement on Westchester County’s lack of compliance with affordable housing standards, County Executive Rob Astorino’s administration continues to grapple with satisfying the requirements of a lingering 2009 decree being monitored by the federal government.
Earlier this month, for the 10th time, federal the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, denied the county’s Analysis of Impediments, AI—a document meant to detail the barriers to affordable housing—despite the federal agency’s new helm, Republican Dr. Ben Carson.
Dovetailing HUD’s decision to deny the county’s AI earlier this month, a federal appeals panel also denied the seventh appeal from the county on April 28, ruling that Westchester has engaged in “total obstructionism” regarding its 2009 federal mandate to increase access to affordable housing in more affluent pockets of the county.
In addition to denying an appeal of HUD’s rejection to the county’s AI, the panel also found that county officials had failed to ensure the construction of a contested project in the town of New Castle called Chappaqua Station by “all available means.”
The project, which is geared to build 28 affordable housing units near New Castle’s Metro-North Railroad stop, was the subject of staunch opposition from local officials who insisted the development be built in a different location. The project has since moved forward with reluctant permission from the local town board.
In a statement last week, Ned McCormack, a spokesman for the Republican Astorino administration, said he is confident that the county will still be able to clear up its remaining requirements from the settlement, despite the latest denial.
“The monitor-approved consultant, VHB, has found no evidence of exclusionary zoning based on race,” he said. “We are confident the remaining requirements can be met, and the settlement concluded in a timely manner.”
But county Legislator Ken Jenkins, a Yonkers Democrat who is seeking the Democratic nomination for county executive, believes that the consultant provided the Astorino administration with the proper framework for successfully completing the AI. “I believe Rob Astornio took that document and cut it out, and then submitted that without the thing the [HUD] consultant said to do,” he said.
Astorino’s administration has yet to detail a specific plan on how it will rectify problems with its latest submission.
State Sen. George Latimer, a Rye Democrat who is also running for county executive, said, if elected in November, he would travel down to Washington, D.C., and walk straight into HUD’s offices and say, “Guys, we are here to settle this.” “I guarantee as County Executive George Latimer,” he said, “within a month we will have turned the corner on this issue.”
Latimer also criticized Astorino for using ideology in the 2009 county executive campaign to rally his base against the Obama administration. “It led him to play George Wallace in the schoolhouse door and that’s exactly what he did,” he said referencing the former segregationist Alabama governor. “He stood in the schoolhouse door and said, ‘No housing in my county.’”
The denial of the county’s AI comes despite its success in clearing a hurdle of developing more than the 750 units of affordable housing required in its HUD settlement by the end of 2016.
While Astorino has touted the development of 790 units of affordable housing—50 more than the required amount—the county’s Democratic lawmakers have drawn skepticism to the county executive’s claim, arguing instead that some of the units slated for construction are still too prospective to be counted.
“There are 790 that have been approved, but whether or not they are being developed at the present time is a different story,” said Alfreda Williams, a Greenburgh Democrat. “They’re in the pipeline but there are no shovels in the ground.”
According to Williams, the latest denial of the county’s AI will come with its own set of consequences. As a result, she said, the county will now continue to be ineligible for federal funding in the form of community block grants, an area in which it has lost more than $20 million since 2010.
“The county executive seems to think he’s punishing HUD, but actually he’s punishing the people of Westchester County,” Williams said.
-with reporting by Christian Falcone
