In the seemingly never-ending effort to stimulate private affordable housing, East Hampton Town is working on regulations intended to make multiunit development attractive to property owners. The need is acute; places to live for people on the lower end of the economic scale are few and generally costly. Many homeowners prefer offering short-term rentals, especially those facilitated by online services like Airbnb, further reducing the housing stock.
At present, the town limits multiunit construction to lots of three acres or more. The changes being considered would include dropping the cutoff to one acre. We doubt that this would be enough to actually make a difference.
Sound planning concepts favor placing housing near services, not in far-flung locations. If any property owners take the town up on it, the one-acre proposal would scatter new projects around, creating ever more vehicle trips on local roads. Before it adopts the current proposal, the town should look carefully at where the acre-plus lots are; it may be that relatively few are near the hamlet centers, where the additional housing would make more sense.
A compelling alternative backed by two members of the East Hampton Town Board would allow multiple units on lots as small as half an acre. Doing so might actually encourage centralized apartment development. The locations where the town allows the zoning exemptions would be key.