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Week in Review: Housing in Focus
Working on Community Housing, All Over the East End
Beth Young
August 17, 2025
Welcome to the East End Beacon’s Week in Review!
Housing in Focus
In East Hampton, A Housing Trust is Born
Building a housing trust start with a foundation….
Many vacation destinations throughout the United States have active non-profit community housing trusts, which build and manage housing for people who work at essential jobs in communities where the cost of real estate is well out of reach of even professional-class workers.
But on the East End, despite the great wealth and expansive number of non-profit organizations here, community housing trusts are not a major part of the landscape.
That’s about to change.
On The North Fork
Greenport is Not Happy With Changes to Southold Zoning Update
Housing & Business Sprawl Top Concerns
The Greenport Village Board at the Aug. 11 Special Meeting
Businesses and lawmakers in Greenport Village are not happy with potential changes to the areas just outside the village boundaries proposed in Southold Town’s Zoning Update.
The Village’s Business Improvement District is particularly concerned about the town’s recent change of heart allowing restaurants and retail uses in a new Corridor Business Zoning District, and many in village government want the Zoning Update to do more to enable affordable housing near the village.
The Housing Beat
This Week on the East End
 Shirley Coverdale & Rev. Charles Coverdale SOME PROGRESS THIS SUMMER ON FIRST BAPTIST HOUSING IN RIVERHEADThe long-anticipated community housing at Riverhead’s First Baptist Church is a bit closer to reality this month, after receiving a Certificate of Necessity for $1.5 million in infrastructure funding from the Suffolk County Legislature Aug. 5 and a Riverhead Town Board public hearing, also on Aug. 5 on changes to the zoning of the property. |  David Gallo of Georgica Green GGV: RIVERSIDE HOUSING WOULD BE A CATALYST FOR CHANGEA proposed 40-unit housing development with 3,000 square feet of retail space on Flanders Road just south of the Riverside traffic circle could be the beginning of the long-awaited redevelopment of this blighted area. |
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Arts
North Fork Contemporary: Elevating Art in Troubling Times
Barbara Horowitz, Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi, James Snyder, Emilia Kabakov and Andrea Grover at the July 26 discussion.
There are many constant forces tugging the art world in different directions — the tug between commercial work and pure artistic expression is often at the forefront — but the arts also have a great role to play in exploring our collective humanity during times when suffering and political turmoil surround us.
It was fitting that North Fork Contemporary was able to bring together two artists from the former Soviet Union, a generation apart but shaped by their formative understanding of autocratic regimes, for their second in an ongoing salon series at the Jamesport Meeting House July 26.
New Chief Medical Officer Takes the Helm at ELIHWhen Dr. Lloyd Simon retired as Chief Medical Officer at Stony Brook Eastern Long Island Hospital earlier this summer, after more than four decades of service at the hospital, administrators there knew they had to find someone special to replace him. Dr. Alison Madden took the helm as the new Chief Medical Officer at the hospital on July 21. |  New Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alison Madden with Stony Brook ELIH CAO Paul Connor at an Aug. 7 information session at Peconic Landing. |
Opinion
Featured Letter: Responding to Editorial
To the Editor:
I applaud your August editorial yet must challenge the assumption about the legacy and lessons of outdated land use. We are NOT all smarter than that now. Seemingly, no effort or consideration has ever been made by Long Island municipalities to plan in conjunction with neighboring municipalities. This continues to be true. Each town likewise ignores what has worked (or not worked) in neighboring towns and reinvents zoning and other code from whole cloth. Municipalities and the people who are elected to run them most often serve the loudest constituents with the deepest pockets – not the “silent majority” of residents.
The Environmental Beat
 A red-spotted purple butterfly CLIMATE LOCAL NOW: COMING HOME TO NATUREby Leonard Green Nature is not optional. Still, all too often, we treat it as if it were. Walking my neighborhood, yard after yard, I see the same assault on the native landscape. Old houses are torn down, and new ones pop up. The land is cleared, scraped, and compacted. Landscape teams roll out sod and install irrigation. Native shrubs like bayberry disappear, replaced with neatly regimented rows of non-native hydrangeas, boxwoods, and green giants. When it’s all done, everything is as neat as a pin. |  Great Pond resident Bridget Rymer and Group for the East End’s Aaron Virgin cutting phragmites at Great Pond in 2020. A CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS TO RESTORE SOUTHOLD’S GREAT PONDThroughout the East End, invasive phragmite reed have choked the views of wetlands for decades, but it's not just the views that they impact. They also crowd out a host of native species. A community-driven effort is underway to restore Great Pond in Southold, an ecosystem just inland from the Long Island Sound adjacent to Kenney's Road, near Little Fish (the former Elbow East). |
Governor Announces Funding To Mitigate Fire Risk in NapeagueAfter a July 16 brush fire in state parkland in Napeague burned the area of a football field and highlighted the danger to surrounding homes and volunteer firefighters, New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Friday announced $2.2 million in funding to remove or burn dead pine trees killed by the southern pine beetle. Gov. Hochul made the announcement when she was in Montauk Aug. 15 to attend the ribbon-cutting for the Montauk Playhouse Aquatic Center, a project that has been in the works for more than two decades. |  New Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alison Madden with Stony Brook ELIH CAO Paul Connor at an Aug. 7 information session at Peconic Landing. |
THE WEEK AHEAD
RIVERHEAD TO HOLD HEARING ON NORTH FORK WATER PIPELINE
The Riverhead Town Board holds a public hearing Tuesday at 6 p.m. on a “Monroe Balancing Test” to determine whether the Suffolk County Water Authority is exempt from local zoning rules in its plan to run the North Fork Pipeline from Flanders to the Southold Town line, mostly along roads within Riverhead Town.
UPCOMING EVENTS
IT’S ALL HAPPENING
 Thursday, Aug. 21 JAZZ AT DUCK CREEK The Arts Center at Duck Creek in Springs continues its free summer jazz series with acclaimed trumpeter Akili Bradley and his Quartet |  Saturday, Aug. 23 PADDLE WHAT’S LEFT The North Fork Environmental Council continues its series of summer “Paddle What’s Left” fundraisers at Orient Beach State Park. |  Saturday, Aug. 23 REVOLUTIONARY WAR RETURNS The Oysterponds Historical Society in Orient hosts the 3rd NY Regiment in Poquatuck Park for a day of reenactments of life at the time of the Revolutionary War |
Keep Independent News on the East End
The Beacon is able to provide all of our content online free of charge thanks to support from our readers. Be a vital part of keeping our community informed!
A Final Note
“I find comfort in contemplating the sunflowers.” — Vincent Van Gogh
See you next Sunday,
Beth
