Peconic Bay Community Housing Funds, funding programs for affordable housing in four of the five East End Towns, have taken in $79.1 million between April of 2023 and the end of 2025, reported New York State Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni on Tuesday.
Pictured Above: The four-acre property at 99 Montauk Highway in Water Mill, where Southampton Town is planning to build a housing complex, was purchased by the town in early 2025 using $4.3 million from its Community Housing Fund. The so-called ‘trade parade’ of traffic generated by workers en route to The Hamptons, which planners believe has been worsened by the housing crisis, can be seen on Montauk Highway beyond the outline of the property.
The programs, known locally as CHF, can be used for land acquisition, affordable and workforce housing developments, loan and grant programs for accessory dwelling units and first time homebuyers, in addition to other housing-related purposes spelled out by Community Housing Plans in each of the towns.
The CHF programs, administered separately in each of the four towns, are funded by a .5 percent real estate transfer tax paid by buyers of property.
This funding mechanism is similar to the Community Preservation Fund, a 2 percent real estate transfer tax that has generated more than $2.5 billion for land preservation on the East End since its inception in 1999.
Community Housing Funds are in place in East Hampton, Shelter Island, Southampton and Southold towns, and like the Community Preservation Fund, significantly more money is collected in the towns with the most land and highest property values and frequency of real estate transactions.
Southampton Town has taken in the greatest amount of Community Housing Fund revenue since the program began to be funded in April of 2023 — nearly $45.7 million. East Hampton Town took in nearly $25.2 million in that time period, while Southold took in a total of just over $6.7 million and Shelter Island took in just over $1.5 million, according to Mr. Schiavoni.
“The Community Housing Fund is necessary to address the severe housing shortage that we face here on Eastern Long Island,” said Mr. Schiavoni, who was long a proponent of affordable housing during his former role as a Southold Town Councilman before becoming an Assemblyman in 2024. “I can’t emphasize enough that this housing is for our children. The people who are going to be living in these places are going to be, by and large, the people who already live here, people who have grown up here or who work here. We need all of them to be here.”
Mr. Schiavoni added that local funding, like that created by the CHF, is “critical to get state grants, so these monies can be parlayed up.”
He urged the community to stay engaged with local town boards to “make suggestions and support housing initiatives when they come up.”
Mr. Schiavoni added that, among the many other pressures facing the East End’s housing supply, winter rentals are “something that just doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Winter rentals were a viable option for housing, and over the summer you did whatever you did, but it was an affordable place for young people to be on their own,” he said. “That’s gone — a lot are now full-time, year-round or short-term rentals. We need a place for young people to be able to rent and stay and establish themselves in our communities.”
This is the first time Mr. Schiavoni’s office has been able to provide the details of the program dating back to its inception, he said, in part because it took the towns quite a bit of time to sort through the records received from Suffolk County the first year.
The way the law creating the CHF was written, he said, any sale that went into contract after April 1, 2023 was subject to the transfer tax, and individual towns had to sort through the transfer records for the first year to ensure the date the transaction went into contract was within that time frame.
“The towns had been managing and handling it, and they put in the hours to get it done,” he said.
Mr. Schiavoni said he’s not surprised by the financial success of the CHF program to date, since the Community Preservation Fund, on which it is based, has been widely successful.
The Community Preservation Fund also saw a bump in 2025, Mr. Schiavoni reported, taking in $152.77 million in 2025, up from $131.51 million in 2024. The program had taken in $141.35 million in 2023 and $172.63 million in 2022.
Southampton took in nearly $85.6 million in CPF funding in 2025, followed by East Hampton with just over $46.9 million, Southold with just over $11 million, Riverhead with just over $7 million and Shelter Island with just over $2.2 million.
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Do these money go to support homeownership or go for tax breaks to corporations that build rental units and siphon the cash out of the community?