By JOSEPH KELLARD
"This makes life easier because when you come here, you're still dealing with a place and living conditions that you don't know well," said Aniyan, who is single and without friends or relatives in the United States. "So, it just relieves your anxiety of where I am going to stay."
South Nassau expects to open its two-building, two-story Tudor-style housing a block away from the hospital, at 565 Merrick Rd. in Rockville Centre, on Sept. 1. While the 900-square-foot, two-bedroom units were built exclusively for hospital employees, South Nassau's goal is to fill them with nurses, focusing its recruitment on them.
"There's a nursing shortage throughout the country, as much in this region as well," said Andrew Triolo, South Nassau's assistant vice president of design, development and construction. "So right now our efforts are on finding nurses, and obviously to provide housing that's proximate to the hospital is a big advantage."
The greater allure, however, is the $1,800 monthly rental cost for each apartment, which comes with one-and-a-half baths, central air-conditioning, an eat-in kitchen and combined living and dining rooms. While the apartments are "below market price," Triolo said, they are not subsidized "affordable" or Section 8 low-income housing. In addition, the hospital is requiring a minimum one-year lease, but no security deposits for the first or last months.
"The whole intent with this was to keep it affordable and keep it close to the hospital, and then this way it became a marketing and recruitment tool for the organization," Triolo said.
"That's very attractive," Liz Wallace, broker-owner at Century 21 Sherlock Homes in Rockville Centre, said about South Nassau's security deposit policy. Wallace said that a two-bedroom apartment in a two-family house in Rockville Centre or Oceanside generally costs about $2,200 to $2,600, and that South Nassau could probably ask $2,200 for its new units. "You can get a two-bedroom in a two-family house, and you would be lucky if you got it for $1,800," she added.
Other area hospitals, such as Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, also provide staff housing, including nearby homes they bought or apartments they rent, whereas Mercy Medical Center, for example, is without housing for employees.
"The one thing we hear from our people that come from out of the area," Triolo said, "is that housing is very unaffordable. So we're pricing it below market, so this way it gives the institution a competitive advantage to hire those people to come in the area."
In the works for more than two years, the new $5 million apartment complex was approved by the Village of Rockville Centre zoning board, and was funded by the hospital and the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Corps. The apartments were built on a vacant piece of property donated to South Nassau by a family that was friends of the hospital. As a not-for-profit organization, South Nassau's property is tax-exempt. This all factors into the hospital's asking price for the rental apartments.
"That gives us an advantage on being able to charge less for rents because, obviously, we're passing on the tax savings as part of the overall operations costs to the housing complex," Triolo said.
South Nassau has publicized the apartment complex as part of its Renaissance Housing Project, a redevelopment and modernization of the hospital that includes the opening of a new five-story north wing in April. During the project, South Nassau made room for some of its planned development, such as an expanded parking lot, by buying up neighboring properties and thereby taking them off the tax rolls. This prompted some Oceanside residents to question the hospital's expansion policies and argued that this places a greater tax burden on the general Oceanside property owner.
Despite its tax-exempt status, however, South Nassau annually gives the Oceanside School District approximately $23,000 to fund its budgets to help offset some of the costs property owners must pay. "It's a payment in lieu of taxes that they don't necessarily have to pay," said Assistant Superintendent Dr. Lou Frontario.
Joseph Ponte, a director of the Long Island Board of Realtors South Shore Chapter, took note of the money occupants of the new apartment complex will pump into the local economy.
"They buy clothes, they eat, they need gas, they'll be banking in the community, and as working-class people, about a third of their income will go back in the community within a three-mile radius," Ponte said. "In another way, we'll be getting sales tax and revenue. Would you like to see a project there for people 62 and older, where there's no revenue?"
Asked about the possibility that the hospital in the future may increase the rent to be more in line with the market, Triolo said, "That's going to be an effect obviously of market conditions, utilities, operations expenses and so on. It's almost impossible to determine that."
"Usually, rents go up each year," Wallace said. "But you don't flip up the rent just like that. I would imagine they would try to play catch up [to market value] eventually."
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
