A movie I recall fondly is Bedazzled, the original 1967 film with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. (I've never seen the 2000 remake.) In the film, the protagonist, Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore), sells his soul to the Devil (Peter Cook) in exchange for seven wishes. With each and every wish, Stanley is foiled by the Devil, who gives him exactly what he wished for but not what he wanted. Observing city government, I am often reminded of this movie.
In a recent article in the Times Union, Roger Hannigan Gilson points out a couple of things that could make the "good cause" eviction law less than what those pressing for its passage had hoped for: "Tenants could be evicted if the property is being sold with the condition that property will be delivered to the new owner tenant-free. Landlords could also evict all tenants in properties with up to five units if they wanted to live in the buildings themselves." Those two situations have eliminated countless rental units in Hudson in the past and could continue to do so in the future.
An application now before the Planning Board makes one wonder about the efficacy of the short-term rental law enacted last year. The early house at 26 Warren Street, once the home of artist Edward Avedisian, has for several years now been operated as a legal bed and breakfast--five guest rooms in a house occupied by its owner.
The public hearing on the application began on Thursday and will be continued in October. The only person to speak during the public hearing on Thursday was Phil Forman, who lives in the house next door. In his comments, he defined a micro concern--"being a neighbor to an untended hotel"--and a macro concern--"that we run the risk of being a city of strangers." Those same concerns were expressed both by aldermen and by members of the public during the year-long process of drafting the legislation regulating the development of short-term rentals in Hudson. One wonders why the legislation we now have is powerless to halt what is being proposed for 26 Warren Street.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CAROLE OSTERINK
If you can't operate as an Air BnB, set up as a hotel seems to be the directions things are taking. How died the Amelia Hotel On Allen Street get approved?
ReplyDeletehttps://theameliahudson.com/
Inns of Hudson LLC appears to be owned by the owner of the Nest on Union Street, who I believe is also the owner of the new Hudson Whaler. I guess that’s the unnamed hotel that will be monitoring this hotel of sorts down the street.
ReplyDeleteNot true. I do not own 26 Warren.
DeleteOwner of Nest and Nautical Nest does not own 26 Warren. Just to clarify.
DeleteThanks for drawing my attention to these approvals. The STR ordinance does not allow short term rentals outside of owner-occupied buildings, and therefore these are not legal, and will be shut down. REBECCA WOLFF
ReplyDeleteA hotel is not a B&B, it’s a separate legal animal and, last I checked the City’s zoning code, a permitted use in the central commercial district which includes Warren Street.
Deleteso crazy yea lets shut the city down and only allow residents who do not pay taxes, work, or do anything productive.
Deletethese hotels are good for the City of Hudson, and the visitors actually generate revenues for City services. Somehow that is a bad thing in the upside down world of phony socialists who seem to live quite a bougie existence in the "friendly" city.
j kay, that’s because these “phony socialists,” as you put it, are already wealthy, usually from inherited generational wealth. They don’t have a need for functioning city economy because they already “gots mine,” so to speak. They can play socialist/Marxist and virtual signal away their internalized guilt for said wealth and push for these social experiments and restrictions to the local economy without any risk to their own financial security.
DeleteThis mentality comes full circle with the other side of the political spectrum, the libertarian who pushes for the decimation of public infrastructure and social entitlements because they have no personal need for them.
Extreme nuts on both sides, meanwhile the middle class continues to get squeezed.
The City's "affordable housing" efforts will continue to be hobbled by the City Council's blind eye to the elephant in the room -- Galloway -- and what that developer's impact is on affordable housing: higher, higher, higher. You've got the PILOT fighting the eviction law fighting the unintended hotels, etc. The City and the City Council is creating the wild west while pretending to be for affordable housing. --peter meyer
ReplyDeleteHello Peter
DeleteThe ‘G” group is actually the 3rd party to buy up Hudson.
In the mid 1980s two groups were in a bidding war to buy every property that they could.
So us old Hudson people are quite experienced in sell sell everything to those crazy buyers.
And think about this. You can not demolish Dr,
.Bliss Apartments until a new multi level residential place is constructed.
The issue just might be who wants that low income low life people moving uptown.
Let’s keep down on the North by Northwest section where dem low life’s belong.
Not to worry. Hudson is a place of constant change but unfortunately also a place of constant place of no, not here. Thank you social media. Oh, I forgot to mention the sky is falling.
ReplyDeleteJust call me chicken little.
I think Carole's remark about getting what was wished for but not what was wanted is particularly apt and insightful.
ReplyDeleteI think many of the actions of the last 1.5 years actually make worse the problem that was trying to be solved.
One example is the STR legislation. (I won't get into all the minutiae here.) The legislation has a large unintended consequence. STR's were the only option for visitors to stay in Hudson at a rate of 100-250/ night. Hotels in Hudson start at a minimum of 300 a night in most cases, and in many quite a bit more. So this means that once the STR law is implemented, we will be a city with lodging options for the much more affluent, further widening the chasm between residents and visitors.
(For the record no one wants bad actors, or warehousing of empty properties)and most were in favor of some sort of common sense legislation. Meanwhile while we were debating STR's several hotels were approved with little or no comment. The Amelia, was specifically stated to accommodate wedding visitors who had insufficient places to stay.
The store owned by long term residents who closed during covid because they didn't receive the help they needed have all be replaced by more upscale shops owned by more affluent new comers. The diode grows bigger with each of these actions, and non of them actually help address the urgent issue of affordable and workforce housing. Even expensive apartments are difficult to find, as there is no inventory.
I fully applaud pro tenant legislation. I grew up in Mitchell Lama housing, and know what it is to face eviction. However, I work that this new legislation, while perhaps helpful to current renters (until their buildings are sold), but I worry that it may have the unintended consequence of causing landlords to be more reluctant to rent out their properties, and to raise the application requirements much higher, creating further barriers to entry for young people, low income people, people without good credit (which happens much easier when you are low income and juggling month expenses, again speaking from personal experience.)
There are people on the council with incredibly important concerns, but the approach to addressing them often seems to fly in the face of actually achieving the goal.
As STR's are eliminated, we will see more hotels, and bed and breakfasts, which are legal, and people who simply decide to take rentals short term or otherwise off the market. In spite of intentions, many of these actions move us more and more to a city of haves and have nots. which is a tragedy, in my opinion.
One other comment under the headline of taking the wrong actions to achieve goals, with unintended consequences of making the problem worse: There are those who say they don't want the industry of Hudson tourism, or rather visitation (we're not Disney world...). Fairn enough, but the answer is not to put up roadblocks to damage visitation, which all have to agree brings significant revenue to the community across the board. The answer is to identify industries, or companies that might be synergistic with the community, and engage in efforts to either build that industry or to recruit companies engaged in that industry to consider Hudson, then engage in job trying specific to that industry, or multiple industries. Hurting visitation doesn't accomplish the goal of introducing new industry, it just damages the current source of revenue for the city.
ReplyDeleteWell said Monica Byrne. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
DeleteWhere is the Tourist Board on this?.
ReplyDeleteI could not think of an individual or group with a less relevant opinion.
DeletePlease forgive the myriad typos in my posts… no opportunity to edit. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
ReplyDeleteI am surprised that after all the sound and fury attending the short term rental law, there is still confusion about the bright line distinction between minimum service short term rentals, that do not pay sales taxes, and B and B's, and hotels, that do. Granted, merely calling a short term rental operation that is not subject to paying sales taxes, a "hotel" does not make it a "hotel" from a legal perspective. The issue turns on the level of service provided.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty sad that Hudson has apparently fallen prey to the delusion that problems caused by housing scarcity and lack of housing supply are actually really something else -- too many tourists! Too many people from NYC buying second homes! Too many people operating hotels/STRs! It's actually a good thing, not a bad thing, that there is a lot of demand in Hudson. People want to visit there, live there, and have weekend homes there. The problems are housing scarcity and exclusionary zoning. Not enough new houses and apartments are being built, in part because of exclusionary zoning that prohibits apartments, multi-family houses, and accessory dwelling units in many areas of the city and that requires setbacks and huge spaces between houses (the houses on Warren Street couldn't even be built today under Hudson's current zoning code), high permit fees for construction/renovation, housing preservation laws that prohibit as-of-right construction and renovation, and other such laws. Instead of trying to address these problems and promote construction of more housing to make the city more affordable, the city's leaders are doing things that are crushing tourism and business and making the city worse, like banning STRs and hotels and signaling to newcomers/tourists they are not welcome here.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, YIMBYs on Twitter are all over this issue of housing scarcity in supposedly left/progressive places like Hudson. Here's a screenshot of a pay-walled article on the topic if anyone is interested: https://twitter.com/_wayneburkett/status/1443257901699698693?s=21
Mark
Zoning isn’t the issue. It’s certainly a suburban zoning model but that’s not the problem. The problem is openly landlord-hostile rental laws exacerbated by a current city government that, beyond its lack of competence, experience and energy is convinced — with no evidence - that Hudson has a “housing crisis.” It doesn’t. It’s a popular place to live and it’s tiny — supply, demand, etc. it has nothing to do with tourism per se and everything to do with perceived entitlement to live where one wants even if one lacks the financial means to do so.
DeleteI hear you, I just wanted to point out that the kneejerk reaction from the left/NIMBY alliance that has unfortunately taken over left/progressive politics all over the country in progressive places like California, Hudson, and elsewhere, to deal with rising demand for a limited housing stock, is apparently: just ban it. Ban AirBNBs, ban tourists, ban out-of-towners, ban second homes, cut down on business, etc. The solution unfortunately never seems to be: let's just try to build more housing, or let's try to make it so that people who can't afford housing but who want to live here have more economic opportunities so they can actually make more money and afford the rising rent and housing prices. There's a housing affordability crisis in NYC for sure, and a lot of people also seem to think there is one in Hudson even though it's surrounded by cheaper rural areas where people could certainly live if they want to. I was just saying if people in Hudson really want to make housing in Hudson itself more affordable, they could start by taking steps to promote more housing, like reforming the zoning laws, getting rid of the historic preservation laws that prohibit as-of-right development, reduce permit fees, create some incentives to try to get some more developers in town to build multi-family apartments, etc. Left/progressive people all around the country are unfortunately just falling into NIMBYism and don't seem to understand basic housing supply/demand issues.
Delete-Mark
I take issue with your argument that Hudson City government is landlord-hostile, JF. Their short-sighted, politically-motivated and little-discussed 'Good-Cause' eviction law is just as detrimental to renters as it is to landlords in the long-term.
DeleteAnd to your point, Mark, Hudson could certainly have more sensible land use and planning if it had adults at the wheel. Instead Hudson has egomaniacs and penthouse socialists who are happy to pilfer the commons and hand tax revenue to a Robber Baron in exchange for cheap laurels and, in the case of Kamal, free housing.
... or prevent billionaires from hoarding houses and apartment buildings - removing potential rentals to over a thousand people from the marketplace - creating a false housing crisis.
DeleteWhy does no one address the real elephant in Hudsons conundrum ?
Well, I disagree with just about everything you say of substance but do agree that the fixation on political boundaries of little to no material import (i.e. being in Greenport or Hudson) is often misplaced. But the value of a place, such as Hudson, is both reinforced and preserved by mechanisms like the Historic Preservation Law, rational zoning (a boy can dream) and the like. The reality is there is very little space in the 2.4 square miles or whatever it is that is both available for building and zoned for building housing. That ain't going to change anytime soon.
Deleteyet you utterly fail to understand what creates demand, by continuously staging your own supply strawman.
DeleteThe classic "blame the billionaires for a housing shortage" argument. Seems like supply-skeptics/NIMBYs are everywhere these days, NYC, California, Hudson, etc. I know a lot of midwestern rust belt cities that would do anything to have the level of demand that Hudson has. It just has to learn how to deal with that demand, like any city that's fortunate enough to have people who want to live there and visit there. Instead, it's trying to shut down AirBNBs and hotels and telling people they should go somewhere else, while simultaneously keeping it super difficult to build more housing or renovate the existing 19th century houses. Anyway, billionaires all go to the Hampstons and Connecticut. It's people who work but are priced out of the housing market in NYC and vicinity because NYC doesn't build enough new housing who buy homes in Hudson. -Mark
DeleteYou get what you vote for. If you are going to elect crackpot socialists and people with no education who can barely write a letter and whose only qualification is a big mouth...then this is what you get.
ReplyDelete