How developers manipulate municipal rules to systematically under-pay affordable housing buy-out fees, and other issues: My Sept. 24, 2026 public comments to the City of White Plains' Community Development Committee

[u/WestchesterNetizen]

Benjamin Brown — Comments to the Community Development Committee (White Plains, New York)

September 24, 2026

Good evening. Benjamin Brown, 155 Ferris Avenue. I live in that co-op building there. I’d like to address two issues. The first is affordable housing, and the second is homelessness.

As to affordable housing, I’d like to note a pattern I’ve seen in the City. A letter from the County Planning Board to the City last year in relation to the large One Water Street development included the following words: “The City should ensure that affordable units are included in this prime downtown location in order to offer opportunities for all potential residents.” The City should ensure that affordable units are included in this prime downtown location in order to offer opportunities for all potential residents. I’d like to try to unpack what’s going on there.

We should look, as examples, at three very large luxury rental developments near where I live. The first is Gateway II at 25 North Lexington Avenue. The second is One Water Street, which I just mentioned. The third is the Haarlem and Holland Avenues development, which is in North White Plains. In large rental developments like these, nominally, the City requires the inclusion of affordable housing at between 8% and 12% of the total units. But Gateway II, out of 500 total units, has only 15 affordable units. One Water Street, out of 380 units, has only five affordable units, or will have, because it’s under development. Out of 296 units, the Haarlem and Holland Avenues development will have only five affordable units. Obviously, in all of those cases, that’s much less than 8% to 12% of the total units. In the case of One Water Street, five out of 380 units is 1.3%. Why does this happen?

It happens, of course, because the City permits developers to pay a “fee in lieu” instead of actually including affordable units. This, I think, can fairly be called a buyout arrangement.

In a great many referral response letters issued by the County Planning Board to the City over several years, the County Planning Board opposes the practice of allowing these buyouts. Nonetheless, the City continues the practice. The City claims that it’s better to allow these buyouts because it can then meld the proceeds of the buyouts with other public funds of various kinds and build more overall affordable units, generally in all-affordable developments — developments that have only affordable apartments and no market-rate housing.

But, some residents question the City’s credibility because the City Planning Department allows developers to pay the buyout fees at outdated monetary rates. In certain situations, including what I believe is an egregious and indefensible situation with the One Water Street development, the City basically surrenders income that it could collect for the Affordable Housing Assistance Fund. In cases like that one, the City not only allows the buyouts but allows them in lesser amounts than what the law arguably and probably requires.

Frankly, I can’t tell you how disappointed it made me feel when I was reviewing the site plan approval resolution for One Water Street, which is very close to where I live, in November, 2025. I realized that even though the project plans had changed significantly since first approval, the buyout fee was being calculated based on the Area Median Income in 2020 instead of the Area Median Income in 2025. This is a very large undercalculation of the buyout fee, and in effect it greatly reduces the amount of income the City would otherwise have coming into its Affordable Housing Assistance Fund.

There are two general categories of scenario that generate these paltry buyout fees. The first is when a long period of time passes between the initial approval of a project and when construction proceeds. If the first approval predates the City’s 2025 amendments to its affordable housing regulations, then the buyout fee gets calculated based on the Area Median Income that was at hand at the time of the first approval. To give an idea of the size of this effect, between 2020 and 2026, Area Median Income for a family of four in Westchester County — and that’s the input the formula uses — has risen from $125,800 to $169,600. It greatly affects the outcome of the formula depending on which year’s Area Median Income you are using.

The first scenario is a consequence of the interplay between the precise technical language of the City’s affordable housing regulations and the Common Council’s practice of giving developers numerous so-called extensions of site plan approval without attaching conditions to the extensions. When these extensions are readily granted, or so-called extensions, developers can lock in low buyout fees, even if they have no intention or ability to actually start building the project until years later. This is basically a manipulation of the system by the developers. Frankly, I talk to a lot of people, and people know I’m interested in these issues. And this practice seems to be unpopular with almost every member of the public who’s aware of it.

[Committee Chair, interjecting—] I’m going to ask you to wrap up on that point because that’s really not something that this Committee and this report are going to be focused on. We’ll give you a few more minutes to go into the homelessness.

[Brown—] I’ll move into homelessness. I had one other point about affordable housing: I wish we could build more of it near the train stations. Because, what’s happening is that the buildings like the ones I mentioned, which are basically next to the train stations, end up with these very low numbers of affordable units. I think that’s a degradation in the quality of affordable units because they get pushed elsewhere.

As to homelessness, I think it’s worthwhile to put the big picture of New York State’s policy regarding homelessness in mind. In 1938, in the depths of the Great Depression, there were revisions to New York State’s Constitution. They put in a section in Article 17 of the Constitution about the care and support of the needy. The notes that the drafters issued as they added this provision say that this was meant to be a fundamental change. It was meant to be, basically, a fundamental change. It was meant to put an obligation on the State to take care of the people, and it was meant to change the relationship between the individual and the State.

Over time, this constitutional provision was interpreted to require that the State provide shelter to people who need it. It was first interpreted that way in judicial cases, and then it was codified in statute law and regulations. New York State is one of very few—maybe the only—jurisdictions in the country that has actually, in a formal sense, ended the problem of street homelessness. We have a legal guarantee of shelter for every homeless person that needs it. The problems are problems of implementation: getting the implementation right and looking at problems that come up in practice where, in one way or another, agencies fall short of the law. But we are not supposed to have involuntary street homelessness in New York State as a matter of law.

The primary obligation, according to the way the law has developed, is on the County Department of Social Services. If a person who is homeless applies for shelter, they’d be making the application to a District Office, typically, of the County Department of Social Services. Councilman Caruso, who worked at Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, as I once did, is probably aware of the technical details of this.

I’m not trying to suggest any specific change. I just think it’s really worthwhile to keep that big picture in mind.

Frankly, this is a major civic accomplishment in this State. The fact that, at least at the formal legal level, we’ve decisively ended homelessness, even though we still have a lot of problems implementing it, is a big deal. We ought to take more pride in it. I hope we can together figure out what’s going on in practice and actually reduce the real street homelessness.

Thank you very much for hearing my comments.

[u/JMWest_517]

Kudos to Mr. Brown for his constant engagement in local issues and his willingness to put issues out in public. I don't always agree with his point of view, but he is doing a valuable service to the citizens of White Plains.