- What does "affordable" mean when relating to housing for the Hudson community?
- What kind of housing is required to sustain the city's workforce?
- Will the housing units that are currently in the development pipeline meet the needs of people in Hudson?
- What gaps still exist?
- More working residents are struggling to pay rent now than a decade ago. The number of households paying more than half of their income on housing tripled from 2011 to 2021.
- The fastest growing industries within the City of Hudson have the lowest paying jobs. People who work in these Hudson jobs cannot statistically afford Hudson housing.
- The greatest demand for housing is for residents earning less than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI). This demand is not due to an influx of low-income residents. It is caused directly and primarily by an influx of higher earning residents that pushes the overall AMI higher.
- Combined with a lack of regulatory frameworks and severe housing underproduction, this significant influx of higher earning residents led to dramatic increases in housing costs between 2013 and 2023. This trend is commonly known as gentrification.
- There are fewer duplexes, triplexes, and quadraplexes now than there were a decade ago. It is likely that many of these small-scale multifamily structures in Hudson were converted to single-family between 2013 and 2023. Some might also have been lost to dilapidation.
- Fewer housing units are on the market for full-time occupancy. Between 2013 and 2023, the number of households in Hudson dropped by more than 200 despite a new increase of more than 30 housing units.
- Housing supply in the pipeline includes 239 units that would be affordable to households making 50 percent AMI or less. These units would help many cost-burdened renters to find an apartment that is affordable for their household budget. However, additional units within this price range will still be needed to support working tenants in retail, entertainment, accommodations, and food services: the fastest growing industries within the City of Hudson.
The visuals for Bosch's presentation to the IDA can be found here.
None of these findings are good. But the one that folks really need to pay attention to is this one:
ReplyDelete"The fastest growing industries within the City of Hudson have the lowest paying jobs. People who work in these Hudson jobs cannot statistically afford Hudson housing."
I have said this before and I will repeat myself: The over-reliance on tourism and gastronomy is a mistake. All it takes is a bog-standard recession to throw Hudson into financial and demographic turmoil.
Everyone talks about housing but no one talks about what types of jobs these people living in these new units will have access to. No one will move to Hudson just so that they can live in affordable housing and work a minimum-wage job.
City leadership needs to think about creating a more sustainable local economy. Coming up with something is hard but failure is only then assured when you don't try.
I never understood why Hudson allowed Etsy to leave our City without a fight, negotiation or sweetener. It was a good selling point to get other high tech-like jobs. Maybe there was a lot of behind the scenes discussion with our city leaders, but I'm just not aware of it.
ReplyDeleteEtsy didn't own its building here. Therefore it didn't pay property taxes. Thus there was no room for the City to offer anything to keep a private company where it no longer wanted to be. Besides, I believe from news stories at the time, that Etsy's move was a consolidation in the face of a tighter funding market.
DeleteI'd also suggest that your idea puts the cart somewhat before the horse: high-tech jobs don't go to places with poor school systems and with a largely uneducated workforce -- like here. If we want to attract higher-paying jobs (jobs, not self-employed folks), we'd need the HCSD to cooperate. We'd need CGCC to cooperate. We'd need leadership from our assembly member and our state senator. We'd need buy-in from our national representatives. CGCC seems to be moving in the right direction but there is scant evidence of the rest. We'd also need a great deal more workforce housing and starter homes -- 2 things we eschew in favor of housing those who are basically only employable in our resident, low-value, job offerings. Hard truths but truths nonetheless.
For a while I've been thinking that there's a niche for a place like Hudson that no one has yet investigated: My employer, headquartered in Manhattan, has R&D offices (the ones were I could work at) in SF, NYC, Toronto, London, Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Lugano.
DeleteWhat these places all have in common (maybe with the exception of Tel Aviv and Lugano) is that they are extremely dense and expensive and they offer a lifestyle that people can get tired of after a while.
For me the only option then was to go fully remote.
With a full RTO mandate becoming more and more common and quite a few employees quitting over it, I feel that the first employer who opens a satellite office in a rural area like Columbia County might have a competitive edge. It would appeal to a portion of their workforce and they could use it to lure people away from their competitors.
If HCSD had a graduation rate of 100% and an A+ report card from NYSED, it still wouldn't matter. What high tech industry employers look for is a large pool of tech savvy / trained folks and proximity to tech colleges. All due respect to CGCC, but we don't have either of those things. We also have no nightlife to speak of, and one of the oldest average ages of any of NY's 62 cities.
DeleteI would say it's a pipe dream that the city would ever attract these types of employers, but of course, stranger things have happened. However, to get to a place where Hudson is even considered for these kinds of job centers, a lot of local people with loud platforms would need to get OK with a lot of changes really quickly.
Seconding what John is saying, we must first create an environment where good paying businesses would choose to invest here and where their employees would want to live and raise a family. We have a ways to go.
ReplyDeleteI also don’t see how we choose to be overly reliant on tourism, restaurants, brewing, retail, whatever. A surprise to the loons in the local Facebook groups: there is no committee or secret cabal that chooses what businesses open. We are at the whim of local and national trends. I will say that for the working class Hudson’s higher end small businesses pay much better than the big box retailers and fast food chains in neighboring towns like Greenport. And Hudson still continues to draw entrepreneurs and remote workers. It’s the reason why the AMI is increasing and for whatever that’s worth, it’s a better situation to the decline that most upstate towns have seen over the past few decades. If you want to see for yourself, just drive over the Rip Van Winkle and keep going west. Beautiful county, but mostly ghost towns will little remaining tax base.
Lastly, for a study commissioned by the county, it’s quite myopic to only focus this study within the city limits of Hudson. A city by name and incorporation, but really just a two square mile neighborhood within the county. We should really be looking at this contiguous developed area of the county, including Greenport, Claverack, Stockport, etc. Real economical solutions to housing and jobs can be found by zooming a little bit out. It’s not unreasonable to expect people to commute 15 minutes for work. Trying to squeeze in as many low income apartments in such a small area, changing neighborhood character, the additional tax burden that comes with it, is bad for Hudson, bad for its residents, and bad for people you’re trying to help without the jobs and infrastructure to support them. It’s only good for developers looking for a quick buck and politicians looking for votes. All housing solutions should be wholistic with the entire county.
The county didn't commission the study, CEDC did, under its auspices as the administrators for the city IDA.
DeleteTo the rest of your point:
Annex Greenport :)