The Sussex County Council has approved two measures aimed at increasing affordable housing. In our partnership with Spotlight Delaware Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with Maggie Reynolds about the measures and the concerns over the impact on infrastructure. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM.
RUSH: Sussex County has approved two measures, which council members hope will increase its amount of affordable housing. This is Don Rush. They come as part of the results of the Sussex County Land Use Reform Working Group, but it also faces the increased stress on the county's infrastructure. In our partnership with Spotlight Delaware, we talked with reporter Maggie Reynolds about the new measures.
REYNOLDS: Yeah, so these are pretty long time coming in Sussex County. There's been a prevailing discussion for over a year about needing to adjust some of the zoning and kind of land use policy in Sussex County in order to shift away from single family homes towards denser housing and more affordable housing. And so these are two reforms that Sussex County Council just passed. One will allow higher rents within the affordable housing program in order to incentivize more developers to take part in the affordable housing program and then just allowing higher density housing projects.
RUSH: Now, I understand there was some concern about infrastructure by one of the council members because it didn't really address that. What's the story with that?
REYNOLDS: So Jane Greenbaum is one of the members of County Council who ran now about two years ago on a platform of really looking more carefully at future of growth and sustainable growth and also land preservation in the county. And so after she and Steve McCarran and Matt Lloyd were elected to the county council, there was kind of this movement toward really looking more at the county development strategies. That led to the creation of this Land Use Reform Working Group last spring. That group met through the spring, summer and into the fall where they proposed a number of recommendations to the County Council about how to approach development going forward. And so this point of contention that Councilwoman Greenbaum brought up is that both the Land Use Reform Working Group and now these new reforms that the council's passed do not address these infrastructure concerns. I think everybody in Sussex County knows there's quite a few traffic issues and just the lack of sufficiently wide roads are like road capacity to handle all the people in the county. And then there's been a lot of concern with some of these development projects I mentioned like Bellmead and Atlantic Fields that just bringing in more housing units without the matching infrastructure is not a sustainable and not a good idea. And so she brought up that she's concerned that the county has still not really addressed these infrastructure concerns in any of these reforms.
RUSH: Now, the other council member you mentioned, John Riley, he said he was pleased and he was pleased because he was hoping at least that the state would not override all of the county's authority. I mean, there does seem to be this tension between the state on the one hand, moving in doing things, and the county on the other.
REYNOLDS: Specifically, there's this Senate Bill 23, which is called the Housing for Every Delawarean Act that State Senator Russ Huxtable introduced. And that is the state legislature seeking to require municipalities to adopt certain zoning and land use type policies in order to encourage more affordable housing and more mixed use development. And so a lot of local governments, including Sussex County Council, as you mentioned with Councilman John Riley's comments have had a pretty strong reaction in opposition to SB 23. They're concerned about the legislation usurping the power of local governments to make their own land use decisions. And so I think the hope with Sussex County right now is that them passing the reforms coming at a good time because it will prevent the state legislature from trying to force the county to make certain land use decisions.
RUSH: Spotlight Delaware reporter Maggie Reynolds on the new measures to increase affordable housing in Sussex County. The full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
