Did you know Senate Bill 23 passed last month and it requires the city to develop, as a goal, a legally binding commitment to create 20% affordable housing in Lewes? Some of the options include turning Second Street shops into affordable housing, or building multifamily apartment buildings along Savannah Road’s bus line. Or will your neighborhood get boardinghouses?
We’ll get the answers next summer when Lewes’ new comprehensive plan is approved. However, there is another option that our planning commission has not told us about. SB 23 allows adoption of a comp plan minus the commitment by the end of January, buying Lewes five years to include the affordable housing piece in its next comp plan. That allows time to develop a data-driven option with vital citizen input to address the important affordable housing issue.
Didn’t know that? That’s because LPC Chair Rick Innes and Vice Chair Kevin Keane, fully aware of this option, have not conducted a public hearing allowing their committee's public discussion or vote on it.
Shouldn’t these be the decisions of the mayor and city council, our elected officials? Or, most importantly, Lewes’ citizens?
Instead, Innes and Keane put forward an absurd proposal of a building moratorium until 2027. After they allowed Lewes to be overbuilt all these years, isn’t it a little too late? Not to mention the obvious lawsuit it will draw further embroiling the city into more legal fees.
By electing the January option, the city is not ignoring affordable housing needs; it is taking the responsible action of having the time to make the right, carefully considered decision. It doesn’t circumvent the law; we’d be following its guidance as laid out in SB 23. Five years also gives the city time to budget for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for consultants to make sure we submit a housing plan that makes sense for Lewes. As a strong supporter of affordable housing, my last letter to the Cape Gazette advocated using the armory’s 5 acres as a solution for affordable housing that wouldn’t impact our established neighborhoods.
Whatever action is taken will have major long-term ramifications for Lewes. This decision is too important for the planning commission's chair and vice chair to make in a vacuum and without the proper data, city council approval or community input. Every day they delay undermines Lewes' democratic process.
Kerry Tripp
Lewes
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