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MELVILLE: New Suit Charges Town With Discrimination

Housing advocates claim town cuts out affordable housing for families

By Peter Sloggatt, petersloggatt@longislandernews.com
2004 April 23

Huntington officials dropped the ball when they approved a developer’s plans for
The Greens at Half Hollow housing development in Melville, say local affordable
housing advocates in an amended lawsuit filed in federal court last week.

The Fair Housing in Huntington Committee announced last week that it has been
joined by the NAACP and several individuals as plaintiffs on a lawsuit filed April 8
in US District Court, Central Islip, and that the national office of the NAACP has
joined the Boston-based Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in
representing the plaintiffs.

The suit is an amendment on one filed previously that charged the Town of
Huntington discriminated against minority families in its approval of the 1300-plus
unit Greens at Half Hollow senior housing development and the related Sanctuary
project located on Ruland Road.

According to the suit, the Sanctuary project — originally a 150-unit affordable
rental project — has been modified to exclude multi-bedroom units, effectively
shutting out families with children from renting there. The project was originally
conceived to create affordable housing off site from the Greens, whose 1375
units are nearly all age-restricted for sale to senior citizens. Of 72 homes not age
restricted, prices range from $700,000 to more than $1 million.

“They excluded all affordable family housing from the Ruland Road site,” said
Housing Committee spokesman Robert Ralph, noting that the project was
originally conceived to meet town mandates for creation of affordable housing in
high-density rezonings. But according to Ralph, school district concerns over
rising enrollments resulted in the project being reconfigured for one-bedroom
units.

“When the school district raised Cain, they excluded the two and three bedroom
units,” said Ralph, adding that in its approval of the rezoning, the town noted the
impact of multi-bedroom units on schools.

“That’s unprecedented in Huntington — maybe everywhere,” said Ralph.

Greens developer SBJ Associates was named in the previous lawsuit filed in May
2002 but not in the recently amended suit filed April 8. “We’ve always maintained
that they had no allegations of fact against us,” said attorney John Harras of
Morton Weber & Associates, who represents SBJ. “They focused a little more on
Ruland Road I think because it’s hard to allege that the Greens, being a senior
complex expressly permitted and authorized under the Fair Housing Act, violates
that act.”

Harras explained that the Sanctuary development as currently proposed is for
116 units of entirely one-bedroom workforce housing at affordable rents.

With their newest suit, the plaintiffs are hoping to require the inclusion of
affordable family housing at the Greens and at the Ruland Road complex.

James Ryan, an attorney with Cullen & Dykman, the Garden City law firm hired
to defend the town, said that while he had time to review the suit in detail, he is
confident that the town will prevail.

"We feel that the town board acted appropriately under the circumstances. We
increased the pool of affordable housing in Huntington," he said, noting that both
the Greens and Sanctuary properties were originally zoned for more "upscale
development." The Greens was zoned two-acre residential while the Ruland Road
project would have yielded seven or eight houses. Instead, "We added another
100 affordable senior low incomeand when Ruland Road is finished will have
added 100 more," Ryan said.

© 2004 Long Islander Newspapers, Inc.