2016 Theses Master's

Exclusion Resolved?: A Case Study of Zoning Reform in Pound Ridge, NY

Douglas, Timothy

In 2006 Westchester County was sued under the False Claims Act by the Anti-Discrimination Center for accepting federal money for affirmatively furthering fair housing from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUD) when in fact they were not affirmatively furthering fair housing. In 2009 Westchester County settled the lawsuit by entering into a legally binding Consent Decree with HUD that required Westchester to affirmatively further fair housing by building 750 units in its least racially integrated municipalities, set aside funds to support the development of fair housing, and to enforce fair housing practices among municipalities that practice exclusionary zoning, if necessary by legal means. HUD determined that Westchester County was not acting in good faith in its pursuance of removing exclusionary barriers to affirmatively furthering fair housing and as a result appointed a Federal Housing Monitor to conduct analyses to determine exclusionary zoning policies and enforce affirmatively furthering fair housing practices. The Federal Housing Monitor conducted two analyses, a Huntington Analysis and Berenson Analysis, and found several towns to have zoning ordinances that may potentially be exclusionary. Pound Ridge was one of the municipalities to have elements of its zoning ordinance be found as potentially exclusionary under the Federal Housing Monitor’s Berenson Analysis. In response the town amended its zoning code to expand its special permit for multi-family housing from allowing only senior housing to allowing all types of multi-family housing. This thesis looks to answer three questions. What are the implicit goals of Pound Ridge’s amended multi-family zoning code? What is Pound Ridge’s capacity, under its amended zoning code, to support multi-family and affordable housing? How do the changes made to the Pound Ridge zoning code meet the goals of the 2009 Consent Decree signed between HUD and Westchester County?