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By: David Winzelberg September 8, 2022 Comments Off on Rough road for residences

It’s no surprise that Long Island’s pricey and competitive housing market has made it difficult for people to find an affordable place to live.

But for agencies dedicated to sheltering and caring for the developmentally and physically disabled, the situation has become especially dire.

Over the last two years, home prices and the cost of land to develop housing here have skyrocketed. Propelled by unprecedented demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and an historically low supply of available homes for sale, the median prices of homes sold in Nassau County shot up more than 36 percent since March 2020, and the median price of homes sold in Suffolk is up nearly 42 percent in that same period.

The high prices and keen competition for houses, especially ranch-style homes that are better suited for disabled people and seniors, have hamstrung Long Island agencies in their efforts to add beds for their clients in need.

The living room at a RISE Life Services residence in Riverhead. Courtesy of RISE Life Services

“A home that we normally would have purchased five years ago would have been around $250,000 to $300,000, now they go for $600,000, double the price,” said Charles Evdos, executive director of Riverhead-based RISE Life Services. “The cost of renovating is also an issue. Instead of costing $200 a square foot, it’s now $300 a square foot. It gets very expensive.”

RISE currently operates 32 residential sites throughout Suffolk County, about half of them in Riverhead. The nonprofit hasn’t added any new homes in six years, putting expansion plans on hold. However, the agency has been renovating some of its existing housing stock to accommodate its aging residents, more than half of whom are seniors.

“Right now we’re renovating three homes, taking the garages and converting them to bedrooms, because what’s happened over the years, the state did not plan for the population aging out and did a poor job of it,” Evdos told LIBN. “We’ve been around since 1984 and those individuals have gotten to be 80 or 90 years old and they require ADA-compliant-type houses on one floor. And a lot of the homes that the agency has purchased over the years are two-story homes, not too many are single-family ranches that are ADA compatible. And the older homes didn’t have wider hallways where a wheelchair can go through, so that’s been our biggest dilemma, trying to convert.”

Another agency that provides housing, Garden City-based Life’s WORC, is also challenged by current market conditions. The organization has 45 homes and has been approved for five more.

MATTHEW ZEBATTO: ‘You wouldn’t buy a home if you didn’t think you can staff it, because then you’re stuck with an empty home.’ Photo by Judy Walker

“But even though we’re approved, it’s very difficult to purchase them because we’re at a competitive disadvantage for purchasing,” says Matthew Zebatto, CEO of Life’s WORC, which also has a preference for ranch-style houses. “The challenge on the ranch homes is those are usually more available out east and out east it’s harder for us because the workforce is very difficult to get out east. We’re kind of in a hiring crisis right now, so the further east we get, the more difficult it is.”

And while real estate prices have risen quickly, Zebatto said that’s only one of the obstacles his agency faces in expanding its housing capacity.

“A lot of agencies right now have stopped looking for the sole reason they’re not able to get the staff to work in the homes. That’s the big challenge, the hiring,” Zebatto said. “You wouldn’t buy a home if you didn’t think you can staff it, because then you’re stuck with an empty home. That’s why a lot of people have put their search on pause until the market comes down and until they have new lead flow of work candidates and right now that’s the biggest crisis.”

Most of the funding that pays for homes and salaries comes from state agencies like the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD). But that funding limits salaries to between $16 and $18 an hour, creating a competitive disadvantage when these organizations try to recruit staff.

“Not everybody can do this job,” Evdos says. “It requires a special person that cares and has a lot of patience. And unfortunately, a lot of our staff work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.”

For Medford-based Concern Housing, which develops its own communities, the biggest hurdle to expanding its housing portfolio has been the struggle to get timely municipal approvals for its projects.

RALPH FASANO: ‘Getting the approvals so that we can build multifamily housing is the biggest challenge on Long Island.’ Photo by Judy Walker

“Essentially we have to acquire land and get the approvals that we need, which is really the major obstacle,” said Ralph Fasano, Concern’s executive director. “Getting the approvals so that we can build multifamily housing is the biggest challenge on Long Island.”

Concern has been working on a project to bring 60 affordable apartments to a 5-acre site in Southampton. Fasano said he hopes to secure approvals for the project by the end of the year, though it has been in the works for five years.

“We’re still in contract on the site in Southampton, but we’ve extended that contract and we’ve paid a lot of option money to keep the owner interested in selling it to us, so we’ve been paying tens of thousands of dollars to keep extending the contract to get the approvals,” he said.

Fasano says the trend is to mix disability populations with generic affordable housing that communities need so it’s a blend, which is what the Southampton project will be.

Last year, Concern, which has about 1,500 rental units spread across 270 sites that it owns or rents, opened Liberty Station, a 77-unit affordable apartment complex on 11 acres in Port Jefferson Station. The $28 million project brought 25 apartments reserved for veterans, 20 apartments with a preference for veterans and 32 apartments for people making less than 50 percent of the area median income, with monthly rents for disabled veterans as low as $550.

“It’s based on what people can afford,” Fasano said. “We see a lot of the Vietnam veterans who are aging now and in their 70s with a lot of medical conditions related to their service.”

Old Bethpage-based Family Residences and Essential Enterprises (FREE) has more than 150 homes and rental apartments, but the nonprofit isn’t currently looking to expand its housing capacity.

CHRISTOPHER LONG: ‘We’re having a very hard time because the rental market has ballooned.’ Courtesy of FREE

“FREE has found all of its locations that we were approved and licensed for,” said Christopher Long, president of the organization. “We were very aggressive in opening homes over the last couple of years, so all of our approved projects have opened except one, where we’ve identified a site that’s about to go under construction.”

That project is a ranch home in the Shirley area that will accommodate four people that have lived in crisis environments like temporary transitional housing and need permanent placement.

Long says that soaring Long Island rents have been troublesome when it comes to finding clients a place to live.

“When individuals are coming in for supportive, unlicensed housing, people who are interested in apartment living, we’re having a very hard time because the rental market has ballooned,” Long said. “There are escalations built into the lease arrangements, and our men and women are on fixed incomes, so it because increasingly problematic then the rental costs are so high. We’re having more of a difficulty there than we are in certified, traditional group-home environments.”

And like all the state-funded agencies that provide housing and services, FREE is trying to deal with everything getting more expensive.

“Every year the state issues new rates, so right now because of what we’re experiencing with inflationary costs of food and daily expenses, organizations are very concerned about those rising costs, because we could not project the inflation costs in our budget,” Long said. “I don’t think we’ve really realized yet the full impact of those increased costs, but we expect them to continue to become problematic for us. Organizations do need to continue to advocate for elevations in the rates to accommodate these changes.”

While RISE usually expands its residence capacity by buying and renovating individual homes, Evdos says the agency is eyeing a 36-acre property in Riverhead for a future multifamily development that could house as many as 200 people.

“I would love to create a 55-and-over community for the disabled. Just like other 55-and-over communities with a swimming pool and other amenities,” Evdos said. “What I’d love to do is put a primary care facility in there, an urgent care where they can get their medical, and maybe a supermarket, too. That would be a dream come true.”

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