Housing project riles locals
Neighbors fret over who’ll move into subsidized senior housing
Malta Opponents of a subsidized senior housing proposal for Dunning Road fear that everyone from “New York City ” residents to “Democrats” will move in and ruin neighboring property values.
Some neighbors in the Luther Forest area are vowing to be “loud” and “vocal” in their efforts to quash it.
Resident Jim Nolan said on Monday that the Beacon Properties project, which is 10 acres behind his house and would include a three-story apartment building and cottages, is too close to existing houses, would cause too much traffic and bring down property values.
“I stay here because I love the community,” said Nolan, who created a Change.org petition against the project that had garnered 356 signatures by Tuesday afternoon. “I love my neighbors. I raised three good boys here. We are embedded here. It’s riled people up in the forest here, 80 percent of us are against it. We will be loud, vocal and maybe have a protest or two.”
Town Councilman Craig Warner has also spoken out against the project but was more careful about voicing opposition in an interview with the Times Union on Monday.
“The people in the forest area are adamantly against the project,” said Warner, who said his house will be the closest to the proposed housing. “There are no guarantees as to who is in there. There is no guarantee that it will actually help Malta seniors. They could come here from New York City or come in from other states also. That’s pretty much my concern.”
Others, at a town council meeting in August, also said they were opposed, including Al Pothier, who also lives on Teaberry Place near Warner and Nolan.
“As a practical point of view, I’m looking at the value of my house,” Pothier told the council. “I’m being selfish here.”
Laura Wernerberg went further. She said affordable housing will destroy the town’s quality of life, elicit more police, fire and EMS calls and bring Democrats into the Republican majority area.
“High density housing does not belong in the suburbs or rural areas but they were forcing it in to export Democrat voters,” Wernerberg said. “You guys are supposedly Republicans, a lot of us in this area are also Republicans. I don’t know why you guys would want that.”
Others like Carlyn Miller, who is a teacher and was raised in low
income housing, said she is appalled by the discussion of the project on the social media platform Nextdoor where Luther Forest neighbors unleashed their disgust with the project.
“I show great disdain for the hateful language being used; undesirable, mentally challenged and freeloaders are so easily used,” Miller said at the same town meeting. “That can reflect very poorly on our community, this is what we should be, a community.”
The president of Malta Seniors, Kathy Eitzmann, also spoke in favor of the project, saying more affordable senior housing is needed and it will not drop property values.
The project, designed for seniors with an aver
age income of $28,000, is not a done deal. Duncan Barrett, president of Beacon Properties, said Monday the land, owned by the Northway Church, has yet to be purchased. He also has not secured the necessary state and federal funds to build the project.
He understands that the residents are opposed to the 60 apartments in the three-story building and 45 cottages. With their concerns in mind, he is dropping efforts to push for a zoning variance to expand into an additional acre, which would have allowed for a larger buffer between his units and the existing homes. He said he will design the project to fit the existing downtown zoning on the land now. And, he promised, “We will be good neighbors.”
But neighbors are not swayed and are more
upset with the town than Beacon Properties, mainly because they were not alerted by the town about the proposal.
“We had to find out here when an anonymous flyer showed up in our mailbox,” Nolan said. “There is lack of transparency in Malta.”
Also on Monday, Supervisor Darren O’connor said it’s not the town’s responsibility to go door to door notifying residents about proposals and he is unsure why people are complaining about transparency when meeting agendas, minutes and proposed projects are available on the town’s website.
“People came out and spoke at the meeting,” O’connor said. “We took their comments and will consider their concerns carefully. Everyone is welcome to come in.”