Oyster Bay Town has settled two housing discrimination lawsuits brought by the federal and state governments, closing out a legal fight that started more than a decade ago over affordable housing programs critics said favored white residents.
The town board voted unanimously to approve both settlements at its April 14 meeting, handling the approvals as part of the resolution calendar without public comment from the board or Town Supervisor Joseph Saladino.
The federal government filed suit against the town in 2014, alleging that the Oyster Bay Next Generation and Oyster Bay Golden Age Housing programs violated the Fair Housing Act. The Justice Department’s core argument was straightforward: both programs gave preference to existing town residents, and Oyster Bay’s population was predominantly white. That preference, the feds said, effectively shut African-Americans out of below-market-rate homes built specifically for first-time buyers and senior citizens.
The state Division of Human Rights followed a year later with its own suit in 2015, arguing the same Fair Housing Act standards barred the town from using what it called “discriminatory practices” that restricted access to housing based on race, religion, and other criteria.
Neither case ever went to trial. No money changes hands under the settlements. What the town does owe is compliance: all elected officials must select town employees to attend annual Fair Housing Education and Training sessions for the next three years, according to town documents.
The town’s formal denial is embedded in the settlement language itself. “The Town maintains that it has never discriminated, and does not discriminate, in violation of the Fair Housing Act,” the document says. “The Town agrees that it will not discriminate in violation of any provision of the Fair Housing Act.”
That’s a standard non-admission settlement. Lawyers write these every day. It doesn’t tell you much about what actually happened inside those housing programs.
What the documents do tell you is how the Next Generation program worked. The town offered variances to developers, letting them build more units per acre than existing zoning allowed. In exchange, developers agreed to sell only to eligible applicants who met income limitations and to price those units below market rate. It was, on paper, a classic inclusionary zoning arrangement. The Fair Housing Act problem came from the residency preference layered on top, which filtered the eligible buyer pool down to an overwhelmingly white applicant pool before income restrictions ever came into play.
Fifty-six units got built under Next Generation, all of them in Plainview and Massapequa, according to the settlement. Those are Nassau County communities with predominantly white populations. Whether any African-American families who might have qualified on income grounds ever applied and were turned away isn’t addressed in the settlement documents.
The Golden Age program is considerably larger. According to the settlement, the town’s program for residents 62 and older covers 1,476 co-op units across Bethpage, Woodbury and Massapequa. It offers reduced taxes in zones where denser development is permitted.
Here’s the practical resolution: both the federal and state governments agreed to drop their claims against the Golden Age program entirely. The price was the town eliminating its preference for existing residents and their relatives in the Next Generation program, according to Long Island Press, which first reported the settlement details. The Golden Age program survives intact.
The Nassau County Human Rights Commission has long tracked fair housing complaints across the county’s municipalities, and Oyster Bay’s situation wasn’t unique. Residency preferences in affordable housing programs have drawn scrutiny across Long Island for years, because in communities where the existing population is racially homogenous, a preference for current residents can function as a racial filter without ever mentioning race.
For Long Island, this matters beyond Oyster Bay. Nassau and Suffolk Counties sit near the top of every segregation index compiled for American metropolitan areas. The National Fair Housing Alliance has repeatedly flagged Long Island’s municipal housing programs as among the most resistant to integration in the Northeast. A residency preference in an affordable housing program isn’t a neutral administrative choice in this geography. It’s a structural decision with predictable racial outcomes.
Saladino and the board said nothing publicly at the April 14 meeting. The settlements passed on the consent calendar and the meeting moved on.
Twelve years. Two federal and state lawsuits. Fifty-six units in question in the Next Generation program. The resolution cost the town no money and required it to admit nothing.