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Triglia
v. Town of Cortlandt
A
developer challenged the Town’s zoning law as exclusionary. In 1993,
the town amended its zoning law to eliminate all multi-family housing
as-of-right in the community. The plaintiff had applied to build 120 two-story
multi-family units, 10 of which would be affordable to lower income families.
The Town Board had approved this proposal, but after the 1993 amendments,
it refused to take any further action regarding the plaintiff’s application.
The court, in ruling the Town’s actions unconstitutionally exclusionary, noted that the Town “has completely failed to allow feasible provision for affordable (high density) housing construction in the most likely manner calculated to achieve that goal (i.e. multi-family housing). By passing a zoning law that completely omits any affordable multi-family housing of any sort of more than four units, the Town has either acted ‘for an exclusionary purpose’ or its actions have ‘had an exclusionary effect’ under Berenson.” The court ordered the defendant municipality to present to it within four months of the decision, “such amendments to the Zoning Law as may allow for multi-housing zones in the Town of Cortlandt for the Court’s inspection upon failure of which the Zoning Ordinance shall be deemed annulled and set aside.” Triglia v. Town of Cortlandt, N.Y.L.J., Jan. 21, 1998 ”31 (Sup. Ct. Westchester Co. Jan. 8, 1998).
