By Kerri Williams
WESTPORT – Is permitting affordable housing at a significantly higher density good for the town? That was the question before the Planning & Zoning Commission on Monday.
In a pre-app, or a request for feedback before a formal application, local builder Ronald Friedson proposed a text amendment that would allow for smaller affordable housing developments on Route 1 and Route 33 that include more units per acre than are currently allowed.
45 units per acre vs. 26
To make an affordable housing development work for him financially, Friedson told board members that he would need to have at least 45 units per acre. In comparison, the density of the affordable housing development at 85 Post Road West is 26 units per acre, or 68 units on 2.57 acres, according to Michelle Perillie, P&Z director.
The type of housing Friedson is proposing would include nearly 70 percent affordable units on a site, which is much more than the 30 percent required under the state statute 8-30g. The units would be modular and net zero, which would cut down on the cost, he said.
“I do affordable housing,” Friedson told board members. “I know the numbers. It’s got to be a business.”
Friedson, who resides in Westport, later told board members that he is in the process of building an affordable housing project in Fairfield that should be completed in March.
Mixed reactions
The proposal got mixed reactions from commissioners, with most saying that the plan needs to be considered by a subcommittee.
Commissioner Michael Cammeyer said he thinks a subcommittee should address the density question in meetings in which townspeople can voice their thoughts. “In my mind, this helps mold the future of Westport,” he said.
Member John Bolton agreed, saying that the increase in density is significant. “This is a subcommittee issue,” he said. “Not to kick the can down the road, but this needs more analysis.”
For Michael Calise, the answer is that the commission needs to take “a long, hard look at affordable housing.” He cited a big push for off-site affordable housing recently as well as other text amendments being proposed to the commission. “We need to put the brakes on any solutions and go back to the drawing board and decide what our goals should be,” he said.
Refreshing
Chairman Paul Lebowitz called Friedson’s thinking “refreshing” and “outside the box.” Land cost is the biggest impediment to affordable housing, he said, leaving many young families and seniors and people with special needs “out in the cold.”
Lebowitz also liked the idea of having a larger percentage of units in a development as affordable, calling it a “win for the town.”
Alternate Breanne Injeski and member Amy Wistreich both praised Friedson’s approach to having more smaller-scale developments, which they said fits the nature of the town. But Wistreich cautioned her fellow commissioners against writing text amendments “too easily.”
“We are in a housing crisis,” Wistreich said. “We do need affordable housing as long as it meets with our goals.”
Kerri Williams
Kerri Williams is an award-winning writer and journalist. She has worked as a reporter at the Norwalk Hour, as Living editor at the Darien News-Review, and managing editor for the Norwalk Citizen-News. For Westport Journal, she is a reporter as well as a gardening columnist, writing “Cultivating with Kerri.” She recently published her first children’s book – “Mabel’s Big Move,” based on her daughter with special needs.
We are not in a housing crisis. It is a manufactured construct, and we have to stop destroying every inch of land and letting developers run amuck. All of these rule bending approaches open the doors to more rule bending which then open the flood gates to urban sprawl. Do we not take lessons from neighboring towns and cities? Have you looked at Fairfield? Norwalk? The infrastructure literally cannot handle it, and honestly I did not move here to live in an extension of NY. I think the P&Z members need to think long and hard about these kinds of projects, especially in an election year. Can we not all just fall in the line of the destruction of Fairfield county and be different? Must we all be on a mission to be Stamford? The traffic Is already is unrelenting…not sure how they can’t see this.
These affordable housing builders are not doing these projects because they are saints. They do them because they are profitable. And the easier the town makes affordable housing development, the more developments this town will get. The problem is that Westport is already at its limit for traffic. This small town cannot handle hundreds of new apartments built because developers can make millions of dollars. Every primary street in this town is jammed with cars and I95 is literally a parking lot eight hours a day. Which prompts the age old question, when is enough enough?
Saranda and Jeffrey make excellent points. I have lived in Westport for over 50 years. A beautiful town with wonderful people. Now due to today’s greed, we have predatory developers destroying the town. It seems the goal of our boards and commissions is to turn Westport into New York’s Co-Op city. Work with our elected state reps and senators to change the law. Fight these issues in court. I am sick of reading Westport officials, board members and attorneys saying ” we have to approve it or they will sue”. Let them sue. Fight them in court. Money well spent. Protect our town – that’s why you have been elected, appointed or hired. Some of our boards and commissions either ignore or do not consider the impact on our town’s environment, traffic, safety, quality of life, etc. Do we just blacktop the whole town, build thousands of apartments and disregard our environment? Can you imagine the traffic and the water runoff/flooding.
Yes we need to have affordable housing. This is not the way to accomplish it.
I can get pretty steamed about comments concerning affordable such as appear here.
So allow me to state up front: I am a Westporter now living in Black Rock. I would greatly enjoy affordable housing in my treasured hometown.
Yes, it’s my hometown, and it’s been my hometown since 1959 — that’s 66 years,
I am 68 years old. My parents, both raised in Queens, moved from Manhattan’s Upper West Side to Westport in 1959. That was the year after the Connecticut Turnpike opened. They saw that the shoreline communities from Greenwich to New Haven were about to grow rapidly. They wanted out of NYC and to move into this wonderful town.
How did they know Westport was wonderful? As it turns out, both sets of their parents — my grandparents — purchased houses in Westport right after World War II. My parents were married in the back yard of my maternal grandparents house on Abbots Lane off Cross Highway in 1955, and the in-laws, my paternal grandparents, traveled only from Sasco Creek Road to attend.
So I’m a third-generation Westporter with a family history here going back 75 years. To be more blunt, I am a third-generation Westporter who needs affordable housing.
I am a Staples High School Class of 1975 graduate. In a few weeks, my class will celebrate its 50th reunion in Westport. In addition to Staples, I attended then-Long Lots Junior High School and three elementary schools: Coleytown, Burr Farms, and Bedford. (Burr Farms is since demolished and Bedford Elementary became Town Hall.)
There are probably readers here who think I have no right to advocate for Westport to have affordable housing. I will stipulate that if there is a wealth test for current residency, I certainly don’t meet it.
But as a student in the Westport Public Schools, when we talked about democracy and community, we didn’t talk about wealth. Our aspirations were better communities for all, not for some. Including Westport. That’s what Westport schools taught me.
I don’t deserve an opportunity to live in Westport because I can pass a wealth test. I deserve an opportunity because I love this town and I represent 76 continuous years of my family’s participation in the town and best hopes for the town. It’s my home, pure and simple.
You probably think residents of affordable housing will be scary strange newcomers who will ruin the town. There goes the neighborhood, and all that. But from my perspective, and with all due honor, y’all are the scary newcomers ruining the town I love.
Saranda Berisa, I think you’re wrong. The housing crisis is real, certainly very real for me.
I’m glad you chose to move out of New York City. But you are late to the game. I am disappointed that newcomers like you now have such a generous approach to housing people like me, which approach is: Fugettaboutit. (I wrote that in New York-ease so you’d understand it.)
Your fear about infrastructure is overblown. I drive all over Connecticut for my work. Your insinuation that Fairfield and Norwalk have completely destroyed their local infrastructure to serve new housing is wrong. They seem to be coping just fine.
As for traffic, I’m already on Westport roads regularly. How would I increase traffic when I’m already here?
Jeffrey Heil also complains about roads and adds to the mix his fears about developers. We’ve all watched the exaggerated disaster of Hamlet in Saugatuck. But if you want to tar Ronald Friedson with the Hamlet brush, you’ll have to tar me first. Ron and I have known each other since boyhood in Westport. His parents were retailers in Downtown, so he is a two-generation Westporter at a minimum. It is rich, fallacious and preposterous to suggest that Ron Friedson is an evil-doer. He is a Westporter, like me and you. He’s also a member of my Staples Class of 1975.
You know who added traffic to our town? Newcomers like you. Not people like me who simply want to
live affordably in our town.
Richard Bortolot compares affordable housing in Westport to the supposed horror of Co-Op City in the Bronx. I know people in Westport who were raised in Co-Op City. It was a mart courageous owner-occupied housing and retail development by the New York Urban Development Corp. during the 1960s. Nothing in Connecticut approaches the scale of Co-Op City. It’s a red herring to suggest such to scare Westporters from adopting public policies to enable Wesypiryers like me to live in Westport.
As usual, moms say it best. My mother used to say, “The last one in wants to be the last one in.”
How about you look in the mirror? Who is the last one in who wants to be the last one in?