How many group homes in a community are too many?
A proposal to site a group home on Sebastian Drive in Riverhead sparked a debate on that subject at Tuesday night’s town board meeting.
Sebastian Drive meanders north from Sound Avenue, just east of Park Road, finishing in a cul-de-sac. The road is lined with 10 single-family homes and a couple of wooded still-vacant lots.
One of the wooded parcels, just shy of an acre in size, is slated for development with a group home for developmentally disabled adults, to be built and operated by AHRC Suffolk, a private nonprofit organization that operates more than 30 such homes across Suffolk County. It would be the third AHRC group home in the Town of Riverhead, according to town tax records.
Sebastian Drive residents are not happy about it and went to the town board meeting Tuesday night to register their objection. They worry about the impacts of the group home on their neighborhood — especially the traffic they anticipate will result.
“There’s going to be constant employees coming in and out,” said resident Mary Williams, who delivered a petition to the town board Tuesday. “Nurses, social workers, aides coming in and out. We’re 10 homes on this tiny road,” she said. Williams asked the board to “reconsider” before issuing a building permit for the construction of the home.
The proposed 3,000-square-foot, single-story home will house six residents, according to a Feb. 6, 2018 letter from AHRC Suffolk to Riverhead Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith describing the proposed use.
N.Y. State Mental Hygiene Law makes the group home — a “community residential facility” — a single-family dwelling for purposes of local zoning ordinances.
Under the state law, municipalities do not have authority to approve or disapprove the use. Once given mandatory notice by a sponsor agency like AHRC, the municipality can suggest alternative sites or object to the proposal because of a “concentration” of community residential facilities in the municipality. The municipality is given 40 days to suggest alternatives or raise a “concentration” objection. It has the right to request a hearing before the state commissioner of mental health.
According to the Riverhead Town 2018-2019 tax roll, there are 33 group homes for developmentally disabled adults located in Riverhead. Neighboring municipalities have far fewer community residential facilities, according to their 2018-2019 tax rolls. Southold has seven. Southampton has 17.
“We are overloaded,” Sebastian Drive resident Theodore Clements told the town board Tuesday.
Former councilwoman Barbara Blass told the board that town officials have long felt there was a “saturation” of these facilities in Riverhead.
Sebastian Drive residents are also upset that they had no advance notice of the proposed group home, which they argue would violate the subdivision’s covenants and restrictions — filed in 1976, before the adoption of the state law that makes the community residential facilities single-family dwellings.
Riverhead Town did not object to the proposed facility. Jens-Smith responded to AHRC’s letter on Feb. 27, 2018, saying the town wanted the organization to consider alternative sites on Main Street. But her letter did not suggest specific sites. On March 20, AHRC wrote to the supervisor again to say that since the town did not object or suggest an alternative site within the 40-day period provided in state law, the organization would move forward with the facility at the Sebastian Drive site.
Council members Jodi Giglio and James Wooten said Tuesday night they had been unaware of the proposal before last week, when informed by Sebastian Drive residents. Each member of the town board was cc’d on AHRC’s Feb. 6, 2018 letter, along with the town clerk. The town board’s Feb. 21, 2018 agenda included under “correspondence” the AHRC letter. The agenda read: “AHRC — letter of notification and intent to establish and operate a new Individualized Residential Alternative (IRA) at 13 Sebastian Drive, Riverhead.”
Giglio said Tuesday the supervisor should have brought the request to a town board work session for discussion.
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