Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino has a commercial airing in Nassau County that shows high-rise apartment buildings shooting up around smaller houses in a suburban neighborhood. The blue sky turns dark as the buildings climb, dwarfing the suburban homes.
Astorino, a Republican, is running for governor against incumbent Democrat Andrew Cuomo this year. In the commercial, his camp accuses the governor of siding with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in a battle over affordable housing.
Cuomo, who was HUD secretary under President Bill Clinton, is said in the commercial to favor a push by HUD to dismantle local zoning and allow for high-rises to be built on any street.
The narrator says, “Governor Cuomo, if you think unelected bureaucrats in your old agency should be in charge of Nassau communities, you”™ve been in Washington and Albany too long,”
It is likely not a commercial from a county executive ready to make nice with HUD, instead giving evidence that Astorino is hoping the standoff will be a campaign point in other suburban areas of the state.
HUD is threatening to withhold $5.2 million in federal community development block grants, or CDBGs, if the county doesn”™t comply with a 2009 affordable housing settlement, which requires that Westchester file an analysis of impediments to fair housing in the county.
In that settlement, between the county, HUD and a New York City nonprofit called the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York, Westchester agreed to build or obtain 750 units of affordable housing in some of its wealthiest communities, where black and Hispanic residents made up less than 2 percent and 7 percent of the overall population, respectively.
The county has built a number of the units it is required to, but the “analysis of impediments” piece continues to cause static. Astorino”™s administration said its own analyses of local zoning showed no discriminatory zoning or barriers to fair housing and it denies that zoning has played any part in the racially fragmented demographics of the county.
HUD has not said it favors zoning that would allow for high rises in any neighborhood, but has taken a critical view of codes that prohibit multifamily construction or that limit housing stock to only large properties with big homes.
HUD has already withheld $7.2 million in grants due to the standoff dating back to 2011.
Westchester County Board of Legislators Chairman Michael Kaplowitz announced HUD had agreed to delay pulling the additional grants until June 9, by which time the chairman hoped to reach a compromise. Kaplowitz said the board agreed to approve legislation of an analysis of impediments to fair housing in local communities.
“HUD”™s willingness to work with (the board) is a clear indication that they share our belief that we can work with all the stakeholders in this settlement to reach a conclusion that satisfies our obligations under the settlement,” he said.
But any legislation that goes through the county legislature will likely face veto by Astorino.
With President Barack Obama visiting Westchester County on May 14, the county executive invited the president and his opponent in the gubernatorial race, Cuomo, to join him on a tour of the county to discuss the settlement.
“There are barriers to homeownership in Westchester, but they are economic, not racial or ethnic,” Astorino wrote in a letter to Obama and Cuomo.
The governor, for his part, has not publicly discussed his thoughts on the HUD settlement, despite the accusations in Astorino”™s Nassau commercial that said Cuomo was siding against Westchester. Cuomo lives in New Castle, one of the towns targeted by the settlement.
