willing to discuss their relationships with their landlords and with the Village. We spoke with one Report of the Croton Housing Taskforce Page 7 tenant in Bari Manor who remained appreciative of the Village’s efforts to protect the residents of Bari Manor in 2003 by declaring a housing emergency and placing all multifamily buildings with more than 50 units under the rules set forth in New York’s ETPA. In our discussions with the tenant, he provided data indicating that the landlord was not always ideal, but the ETPA provided tenants with additional rights, particularly the right to have the building maintained and serviced as set forth in the ETPA and the right to renewal leases for most tenants, which prevents Bari Manor from retaliatory eviction. In contrast, our discussion with a tenant in a multi-family building not covered by the ETPA revealed many of the problems for tenants in Croton-on-Hudson. First, there is not very much available inventory, which empowers the landlords and leaves tenants in fear of retaliatory eviction. Second, there are very few regulations at the Village-level providing any protection of tenant rights or guaranteeing service and maintenance. Not only were there few regulations protecting residents, but enforcement of the regulations that did exist was hard to come by. Nowhere was information provided to tenants about which Village offices covered which issues. There was also no real coverage in the evening or weekends beyond the fire department and the police department. When the fire department did come out to her building, they immediately recognized a number of safety issues but there was nowhere for the resident to report those issues or have them properly redressed. We were also provided data from village residents at the Housing Forum held on January 28, 2021 where Norma Drummond, Westchester County Planning Commissioner, presented the findings of the Westchester County Housing Needs Assessment both at the County and the Village level. The vast majority of speakers addressed the need for more affordable housing in Croton and the growing unaffordability of Croton-on-Hudson to residents and people who work in surrounding areas. A number of speakers also expressed concern about the specific numbers in the report regarding just how unaffordable living in Croton-on-Hudson is for many of its residents. Those few speakers who expressed concerns about increasing housing stock, whether as affordable or market rent housing, expressed concerns about the Village’s infrastructure capabilities and a fear of overcrowding in our schools. Many of these same issues were raised again as the Village works toward the sale of and development into affordable housing of 41-51 Maple Street (Katz Property) by Regan Development. Similar concerns about the Village’s growth capacity had already been discussed with the Village Engineer. He believed that the Village was well equipped for future development and believes that our water supply and sewer capacity are capable of handling far more use. Report of the Croton Housing Taskforce Page 8 Table 1 CHUFSD Building Enrollment 1800 Enrollment 1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 98-99 99-00 00-01 01-02 02-03 03-04 04-05 05-06 06-07 07-08 08-09 09-10 10-11 11-12 12-13 13-14 14-15 15-16 16-17 17-18 18-19 19-20 20-21 1200 Academic Year Source: 20-21 Official Budget Statement CHUFSD Research from information available through the NYS Education Department gave us a picture of our school population that contrasts strongly with the expressed fears of overcrowding in our schools. From data published by the Croton Harmon Union Free School District, one can see the rise and fall of the school population over the past 20 years as set forth in Table 1. The most current information on the school building enrollment is the 2020-21 school year with a school population of 1,513. The previous year, unaffected by COVID, had a school building population of 1,582. This represents a significant decrease from the population of 1,752 as recently as the 2009-2010 School Year. Given the long history of changes in the composition of the Croton Harmon Union Free School District as well as the buildings composing the district, even the high watermark of Croton’s school population in 2009-2010 should not necessarily be considered a limit on our potential for students. Report of the Croton Housing Taskforce Page 9 III. A. Recommendations Protecting Our Residents One of the first questions raised by the Croton Housing Task Force after seeing the data in the Westchester Housing Needs Assessment was whether the data collected for Croton was accurate. To that end, we attempted to independently validate the accuracy of information in the County report. This data collection process emphasized two separate and related points: (i) the historical preference for single family home construction in the Village has left us short of multi-family housing and rental units of all kinds. The multi-family units that do exist tend to be concentrated in specific areas of