Long Island residents are warming up to rental-apartment project proposals as it becomes increasingly difficult to find financing for a single-family home, according to the Wall Street Journal.
AvalonBay Communities is in the process of receiving rezoning that would allow them to build more than 300 apartments on a 26-acre in Huntington Station — the area’s first new apartment complex in a decade. Though initially rejected by a community board in September, the developers have adjusted their specification from 490 units to 379 units and are slated to get approval today.
“The big need on Long Island is different types of housing,” said Frank Petrone, Huntington’s town supervisor. “It’s very easy to say, ‘no, no, no, people don’t want it.’ But if you don’t change with the times, the area will change, it will deteriorate, no question.”
AvalonBay is also developing 349 apartments in Rockville Center and another 200 in Mitchel Field.
Single-family houses make up most of the housing stock on Long Island. Rental units account for less than 18 percent of the its supply, compared with 35 percent and 38 percent in Bergen County, N.J. and and Westchester County, N.Y., according to Alexander Goldfarb, a real estate investment trust analyst with Sandler O’Neill + Partners.
“We’re behind the curve and we’ve been behind the curve for a long time, at least 30 years,” said Eric Alexander, executive director of Vision Long Island, a local non-profit group. [WSJ]
