Robert Sassi, county legislator and chairman of the newly formed task force, said that a series of expert speakers will be invited in the coming months to help lawmakers gauge existing challenges and come up with suggestions for enhancing housing affordability.
“My favorite movie is ‘A Wonderful Life’ starring Jimmy Stewart, and there is a scene where George Bailey [played by Stewart] is in the boardroom and the board is giving him a hard time,” Sassi said.
“And [Bailey] says to them, ‘Helping people own homes ... doesn’t that make them better citizens? Doesn’t that make them better customers?’ One hundred percent.
“We are not going to solve anything overnight, today, tomorrow, or next week, but we are going to go on a journey, and we are going to go down this road and see what is out there.”
The special task force committee, which comes under the legislative Human Services Committee, is comprised of four bipartisan lawmakers: Republican legislators Leigh Benton and Janet Sutherland, as well as Democrat legislators Genesis Ramos and Kevindaryan Lujan.
“I think we just need to build affordable housing,” Benton, who also serves as the majority leader, said at the meeting. “Instead of building apartments, we need to build one-bedroom condominiums.
“You start small, and you build your wealth.”
Lujan, who sits on the board of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Newburgh, echoed Benton. The nonprofit is dedicated to ramping up homeownership in the most distressed neighborhoods.
Sutherland, a social worker by profession, added that affordable rentals are just as important as affordable housing for many struggling families.
“I have students that are living in hotels and motels now because they can’t afford the rent of a tiny apartment, let alone buy a place,” she said.
Ramos, who also chairs the Human Services Committee, said that though most land use decisions are in the hands of local municipalities, county government still bears responsibility in housing affordability.
“I look forward to engaging more municipal leaders and other folks that are part of the housing conversation and ecosystem throughout the county,” she said at the meeting.
During the meeting, Nicole Andersen, director of the Orange County Office of Community Development, shared how her agency takes advantage of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grants to develop affordable housing.
Over the past decade, her office has injected nearly $35 million of HUD funding into 55 housing developments with more than 1,300 units and more than 140 public infrastructure projects.
