Huntington, like other suburban towns, enacted a zoning code in the early 20th century to keep out lower-income families. The town now has more than 200,000 residents, making it as populous as Yonkers, N.Y., or Salt Lake City, and almost all of them live in single-family homes.
Housing Help, a local civil rights group, first proposed the 146-unit development, known as Matinecock Court, in the late 1970s to provide some of the less expensive housing that the town so desperately needs. Huntington fought the project all the way to the Supreme Court, and even after losing the case, officials continued to find ways to delay development.
The recent decision to let Matinecock Court move forward is part of a broader softening of resistance to affordable housing on Long Island.
One reason is a sense that Nassau and Suffolk Counties have succeeded too well in keeping people out. Roger Weaving, a Huntington resident, said he became a proponent of allowing more housing construction because it was hard to find workers for his import-export business. “I’m not a bleeding-heart kind of guy, but this is a real need,” he said.
For others, the issue has been transformed because now, rather than strangers, it is their children who are in need of more affordable homes. Hunter Gross, 26, grew up in Huntington and returned to the town after college in Ohio and a few years in Brooklyn. Mr. Gross, the head of a group called the Huntington Township Housing Coalition, which supports more development, makes about $60,000 a year as a political consultant, but he said he slept in a spare bedroom at his aunt’s house because he hasn’t been able to find an apartment.
Stronger public support isn’t enough, however. The game is rigged. Long Island’s land-use rules are among the most restrictive in the country, and it is easy for even a few Scrooges to throw up roadblocks that take years to clear. Peter Florey, the developer of Matinecock Court, recently completed an affordable housing project in a different part of Huntington. There were no unusual objections, so that project took only about a decade.
In 2008 a study commissioned by Suffolk County estimated that Huntington needed to add 13,614 homes by 2020, including 2,789 homes for lower-income families. The town has since added about 1,400, including 500 affordable homes.