Dobbs Ferry currently faces an affordable housing crisis. In the Village, the average apartment rent is $3,173 per month, which is 104% higher than the national average of $1,556. Housing qualifies as affordable when rent, taxes, and utilities stay under 30% of the tenants’ income – a rarity in downtown Dobbs. 

To combat this, the Village of Dobbs Ferry has set up a preliminary agreement with Kearney Realty & Development Group to convert three Village-owned lots into affordable housing, as announced at an April 22 Board of Trustees meeting. The announcement kicked off a 90-day survey period for Kearney to review records, conduct site investigations and collaborate with the Village in hopes of coming to a formal contract. 

The lots – two vacant on Cedar Street and the parking lot at 99 Cedar Street – are proposed to provide mixed-income housing. “Rather than displace current residents to make way for condos or high rent apartments downtown, this type of development allows middle class people to live downtown and reflect a broader cross section of our Village,” an e-newsletter from Mayor Vincent Rossillo and the Board of Trustees on April 25, said.

The Board of Trustees conducted multiple interviews with a handful of different companies before landing on Kearney.

One of the consequences of Dobbs Ferry’s housing crisis is the displacement of local workers. 

Rossillo said, “I think also what drew us to [address the affordable housing crisis] was the people who work for the Village, they couldn’t afford to live and work in the Village. They had to live 50 or 75 or 100 miles away to commute to work in Dobbs Ferry.”

“From a housing perspective, I think it’s really great to live close to where you work. That makes a lot of the day, and your life as an adult, much easier than if you’re spending a significant amount of time traveling from home to work,” Jonathan Karpinos, the chair of the modern and classical languages department at Masters, said. Karpinos moved off campus into the Village ahead of the 2020-21 school year. 

Rossillo emphasized the diversifying effects on the community the Village hopes new mixed-income housing will bring. 

“We’ve always been aware of people who are either seniors, who are living on a fixed income, who just couldn’t afford to live in those houses that they raised their families in, because taxes have gone up so much, and just the cost of living has gone up,” he said.

Rossillo explained that often, families who raise their children in Dobbs Ferry move post-graduation because of steep housing costs. He hopes that with the addition of mixed-income housing, those students will be able to return to Dobbs Ferry and find affordable apartments. 

Karpinos said, “The idea of being able to live in an intergenerational community, and to the extent that this helps encourage that, I think that’s good.”

Karpinos, who lived on campus for nearly 4 years, added that a number of factors had to align in order for him and his family to purchase a home in Dobbs Ferry, including maintaining a double-income household with his wife and selling an apartment in New York City, where housing costs are also very high.

“I hope [the mixed-income housing plan] moves forward and happens, because hopefully it would allow a little bit more economic diversity in the Village,” he said.

Rossillo and the Board of Trustees also expect more downtown housing to stimulate the local economy.

“Studies have shown that people who live downtown contribute a lot financially. They shop, they go to restaurants, so it brings a new vitality to the downtown.” He continued, “Some of those new buildings will also have stores in them…so we’ll have some new retail as well.”

The announcement from the Board of Trustees also explained, “It can produce recurring revenue on land that does not currently generate property taxes for the Village or schools, on top of the revenue from the land sale—which is good news for taxpayers.”

Despite overwhelming approval, some residents of Dobbs Ferry have expressed concerns over the traffic and public school implications that may come with increasing the population of the Village. Rossillo said that the Board of Trustees plans to hold numerous public hearings for members of the community to speak to local representatives, and that the Village will run studies to address the aforementioned concerns.

The Village has strived to resolve this issue in the past couple years, notably with the creation of the Affordable Housing Task Force, currently co-chaired by Tracy Baron and Rob Lane. The Board also enacted a law that required residential apartment buildings of a certain size to set aside 10% of the housing stock to make it affordable housing. 

Rossillo and the Board of Trustees have furthermore updated zoning to allow Accessory Dwelling Units (residences that share the building lot of another, larger home), increased affordable unit requirements in new developments and earned a Pro-Housing Community designation from New York State. This most recently includes a new Affordable Housing aInitiative page on the Village website and a $4.5 million NY Forward grant for downtown improvements. 

“[The grant] will have a synergistic effect, because we want to develop our downtown. So we wanted to do things that would entice people to live here, work here, eat here. So while [the grant] wasn’t necessarily tied to [the mixed-income housing project], it was part of the overall plan to have an improved downtown,” Rossillo said.

The 90-day viewing period closes on July 21, after which the Village and Kearney will initiate official plans to develop the land.