In the Region | Long Island: Homes for Returning Veterans
January 15, 2011
ON an 80-by-60-foot lot between houses in Sound Beach, Mark Baisch, the president of Landmark Properties of Rocky Point, is ready to pour the foundation for a 1,100-square-foot house.
Unlike the scores of other similar homes he has built for profit in the Town of Brookhaven, this three-bedroom one-bath high ranch with attached one-car garage is a charitable endeavor. Mr. Baisch donated the $80,000 property to Long Island Home Builders Care, a nonprofit group that is the charitable arm of the Long Island Builders Institute, which has more than 500 builders and remodelers. Using volunteer labor and supplies donated by his fellow builders, he intends to have the home ready for occupancy by April. The price tag will be $100,000, although Mr. Baisch put the actual market value of the house “well over $300,000.”
There is just one condition for any prospective buyer: he or she must be a veteran returning from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The house is one of four in Suffolk County that Long Island Home Builders Care is planning to build for soldiers coming home.
The other three are a joint project with the Long Island Housing Partnership. Land for two of them, in East Patchogue, was donated to the builders’ trade group through Brookhaven town; the third parcel, in Ronkonkoma, has not yet closed.
The buyer will be selected by the Rocky Point Post 6249 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and must qualify for a $100,000 mortgage. The V.F.W. will help find financing.
Lois Fricke, the director of development for Long Island Home Builders Care, described the homes for service personnel as the newest mission of the builders’ group. One reason for it is the difficulty that veterans often have finding an affordable place to live and anchor their lives.
Mr. Baisch cited “personal reasons” for donating the first lot, among them the fact that his father was a veteran of World War II.
Built on rolling terrain, the high ranch he plans will have a wheelchair lift from the basement-level garage to the main floor. The floor plan is open, with a wheelchair-accessible bathroom and level access from the dining room to the backyard. The house can be customized to the needs of the veteran.
Two years ago, at the urging of Clara Datre, the president of the builders’ group and of Daytree Custom Builders of Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy championed legislation giving preference to returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan in the county’s affordable-housing program. “This is the least we can do for them having gone over there, and fought and protected our country,” Ms. Datre said, adding that, “as much as possible,” the homes would be “maintenance-free,” with floors and other elements chosen for high durability.
Members of the builders’ group will also be outfitting the homes with towels, sheets, frying pans and the like. “We stock them as well as build them,” Ms. Datre said. “We want to give back, even in these stressful times for the building industries.”
A year ago the builders offered their expertise free in Smithtown — where, working with the Long Island Housing Partnership, they renovated a home sold via lottery. In 2006, they teamed with Habitat for Humanity’s “Builder Blitzes” and put up four homes in five days for underprivileged families, donating kitchen supplies and items like flat-screen TVs. Two years later, they built two more. They have also completed renovations and repairs on many substandard houses in the Town of Babylon.
IN Nassau, work is under way on a similar plan “that will substantially include veterans housing,” said Carl Schroeter, the director of Nassau County Real Estate Planning and Development. At Mitchel Field in East Garden City, the county is hoping that by April a deal will be finalized with the Navy to take ownership of almost 50 one- and two-family residences south of the railroad tracks, on what was once one of the largest military bases in the metropolitan area, built by the Army Air Corps in 1929. Some of the homes will be refurbished for returning veterans.
Many active military families still live on the base, which closed in 1961, though some of the houses are sorely in need of repair and “uninhabitable.” The exteriors “will have to be preserved,” Mr. Schroeter said. “We are seeking funds to fix them up.”
A search is under way for a management company to run the site as a rental community for the county, though none of the military families will be displaced, he added.
Nassau is also working with Homes for Homecoming Heroes, a nonprofit group in Jericho, to acquire a vacant lot in Hicksville for a new below-market-rate single-family home for a returning veteran.
“I am assuming people in the Army for a lot of years don’t accumulate a lot of cash,” Mr. Schroeter said.
Larry Sklar, the director of Homes for Homecoming Heroes, said the house, to be built with volunteer labor under professional supervision, would be the first of a succession that he intended to build for veterans across the Island. They will cost $100,000 to $150,000. He is also planning veterans’ housing in 34- and 50-unit multifamily dwellings.
His work has a precedent: “Levittown was built for veterans,” Mr. Sklar said, asserting that his 1,500-square-foot homes would be an even better deal. Veterans will be required to put down only 1 percent, versus $700 on houses costing $9,000 each in Levittown, the large postwar planned community. Financing would be provided through the State of New York Mortgage Agency, or Sonyma.
Also, each new home will have a one-car garage. “They didn’t have garages in Levittown,” Mr. Sklar noted.
Comments
Got something to say?
