LIBERTY GARDENS DEVELOPER SUES SOUTHAMPTON TOWN OVER
DENIAL OF ZONE CHANGE
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Concern for Independent Living, Inc., a provider of affordable housing and support services, filed suit Oct. 9 claiming that the Southampton Town Board violated federal and state law by disapproving Liberty Gardens — a proposed 50-unit housing development for veterans and people with mental health disabilities off of County Road 39 in Southampton — earlier this year.
Pictured Above: The architectural rendering of the proposed Liberty Gardens complex in Southampton.
In 2017, the Town of Southampton “invited Concern to propose an affordable and supportive housing development on five acres of vacant land behind the Southampton Full Gospel Church,” according to Concern for Independent Living. “Agreeing that the location was excellent, Concern proposed Liberty Gardens, with 25 affordable and workforce housing units, and another 25 supportive housing units for veterans.”
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleges that the Town Board’s denial violated the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the New York Human Rights Law.
“It is every community’s responsibility to support veterans who served our country—especially those with disabilities—because they are disproportionately harmed by the housing crisis,” said Ralph Fasano, Executive Director of Concern for Independent Living. “Sadly, the Town Board gave in to vitriolic and very loud community pressure from those in the high-end Southampton resort community who stigmatized our homeless veterans. Concern is committed to fighting for safe, supportive, and affordable housing for those in our community who have already sacrificed so much for our country.”
The Southampton Town Board voted 4-1 to deny the project in June of this year, with Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni casting the one vote in favor of the application. The members who voted to deny the application were not on the board when it first solicited the project.
Ms. Moore said as she cast her denial vote that the “location had always been problematic in terms of the ingress and egress onto the property, and some of us met with the applicant to propose alternative locations, but they were not deemed workable for them,” adding that she believes wastewater treatment was not adequately addressed in the plan.
“They had seven years to secure a waste management sewer system, which they did not, and I feel that — as a fireman, fire police, I was up there enough with traffic. I feel that it was in the wrong place, and that’s why I support the supervisor denying this,” said Mr. Pell.
Mr. Iasilli said the town is “at an inflection point, where it needs to deal with affordable housing,” and said the town has “become one of the most progressive municipalities with respect to affordable housing” detailing the town’s plan for its the Community Housing Fund, but said “water quality has become a paramount issue” and accused the prior town board of rushing through a proposed Environmental Impact Statement that looked favorably on the project just before leaving office in December of 2023.
He added that he was unconvinced that a “non-binding” letter of agreement between Concern and the neighboring Hamptons Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing to access their sewage treatment plant would be enough to handle the project’s septic flow, and that he found correspondences with the applicant alluding to lawsuits “to be corrosive to the stability of our local policies.”
Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara, the liaison to the town’s Veterans Affairs committee said “this is not an appropriate location for this project,” adding that local veterans she’s spoken to felt they weren’t included in the conversation.
“I’m not saying no to veterans. I’m saying no to a project that doesn’t fit in the proposed location,” she said.
Mr. Schiavoni said other board members’ comments all began with a statement that “‘we need affordable housing,’” followed by the conjunction ‘but.’”
“This particular one came to us by our invitation, when I was early in my career. We invited Concern here to the Town of Southampton,” he said. “This is a mixed income, supportive affordable living development…. We currently have 2,900 veterans in the Town of Southampton and about 50 of them are on our affordable housing waiting list.”
He added that the applicant “has done everything that the town has asked them,” and the neighboring facility “does have room in its sewage system.”
“I supported it then, and I support it now,” he said. “I am unapologetically in support of veterans.”
Concern says its suit alleges the Town Board “willfully ignored the Liberty Gardens Final Environmental Impact Statement and instead fabricated a false narrative as pretext for denying the necessary rezoning. The complaint alleges that the discriminatory actions by the Town Board caused irreparable harm to veterans and other low-income people with mental health disabilities for whom Liberty Gardens would provide community-based housing and support.”
The complaint seeks an injunction ordering the Town Board to approve Liberty Gardens, along with an award of compensatory and punitive damages.
Concern for Independent Living, a Medford-based non-profit that has been building housing for veterans across Long Island for 50 years, had raised $38 million in funding for the project, its Executive Director, Ralph Fasano, told the Southampton Town Board at an October 2022 public hearing.
Numerous veterans who live in Concern’s other housing developments spoke at the time about the way their homes have changed their lives, while many who spoke against the application said they believed the developers would be “importing veterans” to Southampton to live in the complex. A petition this year asking the board to deny the application said the project “threatens to overburden our local infrastructure, increase traffic congestion, remove woodlands and disrupt the character of Southampton.”
