If you’ve seen long lines outside a home that’s for sale and hosting an open house anywhere on Long Island, you know that the appetite for homes is growing faster than the market can keep up.
Yet, the at-times byzantine nature of Long Island’s land use laws and codes makes addressing the need for housing a constant – if not growing – challenge. And while some very modest proposals in Albany might help, the overall dynamic is unlikely to change much.
An imbalance between what the law allows and what the market demands has continued to grow along with Long Island’s population.
For Long Island attorneys who work on land-use issues, the perception of layers of bureaucracy that keep new housing development on a slow roll aligns with reality.
“You’re certainly not looking at it wrong,” said Kathleen Deegan Dickson, partner and co-chair of the Land Use and Zoning Department, Forchelli Deegan Terrana, which has offices in Uniondale and Hauppauge. “You’re looking at it absolutely correctly,” Deegan Dickson said. “And it’s really one of the biggest challenges to doing housing development on Long Island, the layers of review and different layers of government that have to be involved.”
Long Island itself has hundreds of municipal subdivisions, including its towns, villages and two counties. Each proposed project requires permits, zoning approvals, or environmental reviews. Some communities are more vocal about what they want or don’t want.
Scott Middleton, senior partner at Campolo Middleton & McCormick in Ronkonkoma, said the best way to start the discussion with a client is to set expectations for what can happen to a parcel before the ink ever hits the first permit application.
“Say your clients want 150 units, but they can live with 120,” Middleton said. But town officials say they can only approve and live with 75 units.
“So you have that conversation ahead of time,” Middleton said. “Setting expectations from the outset – for everyone – makes the project a lot easier.”
What’s not easy to address, though, may be the need for homes on Long Island.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey, Nassau County authorized 830 new privately owned housing units in 2024, down from 1,144 in 2023, pointing to a declining trend from the prior year and from earlier-decade highs.
Suffolk County authorized 1,407 units in 2024, up from 1,220 in 2023, suggesting a modest increase in permit activity that remains close to its 2021 and 2022 pace. In practical terms, Nassau appears to be softening while Suffolk remains relatively stable to slightly stronger, with Suffolk still permitting substantially more new housing units than Nassau.
But even as permit flow continues with moderate ups and downs, the demand for project approvals – and the sense of urgency – is only building.
“Clearly, housing is the number one issue,” said Daniel Baker, co-chair of the Long Island Land Use Practice at Greenberg Traurig, which has offices in Garden City and Bridgehampton. “From a land-use lawyer’s perspective, [housing] has to be the number one product that we are seeing coming through the doors…That burden is not limited to housing, but it is most intense there.”
Supply issues lead to affordability issues. And that is getting the attention of municipal and community leaders.
“You look at the East End towns, they’re all struggling with affordability,” Middleton said. “It’s a real problem.”
It’s not uncommon on Long Island for developers or their lawyers to say they began a project with one planning director in a town, and, through completion, wound up working with a half-dozen planning directors as the years stretch on.
There are efforts now, in some quarters, to make it easier and less time-consuming. State leaders are considering proposals to streamline the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). In the Town of Southampton, officials created a Community Housing Overlay District last year to streamline such projects.
David Gilmartin, who works with Baker at Greenberg Traurig as co-chair of the firm’s Long Island Land Use Practice, said efforts in both Southampton and East Hampton have set about improving the availability of housing.
“Both towns, to their credit, have been aggressive about developing affordable housing in the last I’d say five years,” said Gilmartin.
When project viability runs into local code limitations or community demands to reduce or change the scope, alternatives remain on the table in many circumstances.
Baker said municipalities and counties have undertaken efforts through their industrial development agencies to make projects work. Tax incentives are now often a key condition for financing many projects.
“Lenders are so fully aware that these benefits are available here and have been, you know, become a necessity that they need to see them, not just want to see them,” Baker said. “A PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) – that gives you a set tax schedule for whatever it’s going to be the next ten years, twelve years, fifteen years.”
Local officials, applying zoning, codes, and laws to the current reality and the need for housing units, may begin to reach evolving determinations as the urgency mounts.
“I think there’s a recognition that some of it, if properly placed, and even higher density developments,” Deegan Dickson said. “Even if they’re townhomes or you know starter homes for people, that they can be properly placed and beneficial to a community.”