First Question

Along County Road 39, the rubber is hitting the road. The regular talk about adding affordable housing to the South Fork is running directly up against the usual arguments against actual proposals, and how that conversation unfolds will help set the stage for such debates in the future — if there will be debates at all.

Which is in no way suggesting that there aren’t legitimate concerns to address with the somewhat ironically named Concern Housing proposal on land owned by the Southampton Full Gospel Church. Southampton Town Councilwoman Cynthia McNamara has raised an entirely sensible concern: Will adding 60 units of housing be a tipping point for emergency services already stretched thin? And how would access to and from Liberty Gardens, as the development would be known, affect an already troubled main road?

Indeed, adding housing will strain all kinds of infrastructure, including police, ambulance and fire — in fact, the development surge of the past quarter century created the stress to begin with. The question, perhaps, is not whether stress will be created; instead, officials should be asking if it’s worth the offset, and if there’s a workable way to cushion the impact.

Liberty Gardens is not, by design, workforce housing. But affordable housing should be filled by year-round residents, some of whom might well become members of the very agencies that are already stressed: schools, police departments, daycare centers. On the other hand, some will be retired, others will be in need of some form of supportive health care or special needs — as is true of any development.

This is the trade-off that’s made when a community decides the free market isn’t meeting its needs any longer. When the question “do we need more affordable housing?” is asked, these are the costs inherent in the query.

Likewise, the impact on County Road 39 is a legitimate concern, but it shouldn’t be disqualifying. Ralph Fasano, executive director of Concern Housing, noted, exasperated, “Every site we choose, it’s the wrong location.” It’s an oversimplification, but it makes the point: In the end, do we really want to create more housing for people other than the wealthy? If the answer is yes, every specific proposal will have its issues, and its costs. Doing nothing does as well.

Fasano put it another way: “Do we want to avoid all that and just forget about affordable housing?” This is really the question of the moment. It’s not necessarily tied directly to the fate of Liberty Gardens — or to the proposed Community Housing Fund vote in November — but it’s one that must be answered now, with conviction, before any steps forward can be taken with confidence.