It would appear that the Hudson Catskill Housing Coalition and For the Many have been shopping the story of the very modest amendment being proposed for Hudson's short-term rental law to regional media. Yesterday, there was the report by Nora Michanec in the Times Union. Today, it's a feature on News 10: "Hudson officials considering short term rental law."
At the Common Council meeting tonight, Rebecca Wolff, who back in 2020 when she served on the Council was effectively the author of the current legislation, urged the Council not to change the law but instead to strengthen it. In 2020, before the law was enacted, there were 200 properties operating as short-term rentals in Hudson. Today, there are 67 and perhaps even fewer. This decrease in short-term rentals seems, however, not to have had much effect on Hudson's perceived housing shortage.
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Sadly, the sidewalk on that very block near the library where children walk, one week ago was COVERED with dog feces. There must be a very irresponsible dog owner near by.
ReplyDeleteGotta have headlines if you're going to solicit donations to pay yourself . . . to create headlines to solicit donations to pay yourself . . .. One wonders why the commissars continue to insist that curtailing property owners' rights will yield up more and affordable housing when the only new housing these policies have spawned are either unaffordable and sit empty, or exist only on paper (but sited on a flood plain and now likely mired in years of litigation). It seems simultaneously Trumpian and Orwellian to point out that those who oppose this amendment seem to reject science in favor of ideology without a second thought about how their proven-to-be-wrong ideas negatively affect actual people. That the opposition is "liberal" or "left" or "woke" or whatever the proper terminology is this week, only adds to the irony.
ReplyDeleteHudson Hypocrisy Never Misses:
ReplyDelete1. The local ordinance (law) failed to achieve the "desired" outcome.
2. Voters do not want this law, as evidenced by... checks notes
3. The main author (Rebecca Wolff) famously violating her own law
(Times Union: Claims of Airbnb hypocrisy rile up Hudson residents)
If Hudson wants more housing and wants existing residents to stay follow these steps:
A: Legalize/Restore "Missing Middle" Housing and make it easier to build ADUs. Fix zoning.
- Read more on Missing Missing Housing here; https://www.instagram.com/p/DKPX7FfR6Cl/?img_index=1
- And ADU/ Granny flats here: https://actionlab.strongtowns.org/hc/en-us/articles/11811993386900-Accessory-Dwelling-Units-ADUs-Core-Insights
B: Lower property and school taxes to help residents on fixed incomes stay in their homes.
If Hudson spent the same as Kinderhook and Claverack per resident, our budget would be closer to $10m than $20m per year.
C: Focus on creating jobs, attracting more companies like Taconic Biosciences , Ginsberg's, and new industry... right now the biggest employers are the failing public schools, local county government, (both sources of nepotism, discontent and sub-par outcomes) and the downsizing Columbia Memorial Hospital.
If we do not do that, the current trend will continue, and Hudson will become half public housing / welfare warriors, and half rich residents with remote jobs and globally derived income, while the hard-working middle class moves to Greenport with half of Hudson's taxes, no politics, and arguably more value.
Greenport is to Hudson what New Hampshire and Vermont is to Taxachusetts, cheaper and low drama, but all the benefit from your neighbor. (That one was for the Mayor 😘 )
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Finally... why do we give more airtime to professional trouble makers like Quintin Cross or Sam Hodge, look at Kamal's "40 under 40"... where is the list of the dozen people in this County who have created a 100 high quality local jobs?
Ask any politician (ask Sam Hodge and Didi B tomorrow night) 1) what does Taconic Biosciences do? 2) what was the sales price of Ginsberg and number of employees at time of sale, and 3) which food service in Hudson has the most six figure and high five figure jobs.
Simply knowing that might lead to more similar outcomes.
Or, who, after Bard/Galvan, and Columbia County Gov (that does not pay property taxes) is the 2nd, and 3rd biggest property tax payer in Hudson... this one is telling.
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Let's valorize those residents. Let's ask them what they need to create more good jobs.
If we can double the number of successful local entrepreneurs more people can afford the dozens of apartments currently sitting empty in Hudson.
Reference for Wolff hypocrisy:
https://www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley/news/article/Airbnb-Hudson-Rebecca-Wolff-17144875.php
A Gossips reader alerted me that I was namechecked in a previous but related article's comments, complete with scare quotes around my job title. While I don't necessarily feel that I need to defend my record, so to speak, I do feel that Gossips readers are entitled to factual accuracy, and that the conversation around housing affordability and availability could stand to be expanded. Readers may also be unaware of many of the housing strategies and efforts underway beyond Hudson's boundaries. To that end:
DeleteCEDC pays one person (not "people like") to be the Housing Development Coordinator (no scare quotes necessary, that's my actual title). As far as I know, HCHC had little to nothing to do with creating this position; I've certainly never spoken with any of their representatives. Rather, the creation of this position was one of the recommendations that arose from the 2022 Columbia County Housing Forum (available here: https://us06web.zoom.us/rec/play/gD42TmX4QAzitL9kco-SJs_KCZ6RI7LNWKI_K2_yya1--NpVOrXEj2_3seE59dRhtxZTru6vdJPRkNmn.kkOHqrcJiiod064S?eagerLoadZvaPages=sidemenu.billing.plan_management&accessLevel=meeting&canPlayFromShare=true&from=share_recording_detail&continueMode=true&componentName=rec-play&originRequestUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fus06web.zoom.us%2Frec%2Fshare%2F-5R7nLzwTyRdl22722-KyEYwllcW2NrmhwChcUeL9-dx_UpWaJ_AZvZvi954W3UN.DmFY_qAXiJpwWa-g)
In a little over 3 years in this role I've brought a little under $3M in various housing-related funds into the county. Including $2M for the very ADUs HCS is championing and, most recently, about $250K to begin addressing problem properties like the one that was the subject of a previous Gossips post (https://gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2026/01/a-tale-of-two-houses.html). I've also helped to form two county-wide organizations in the past few years; creating a county-wide organization was another of the Housing Forum recommendations.
It may interest HCS (and similarly-minded Gossips readers & commenters) to know that the founder of Strong Towns, the group often referenced for certain housing "solutions"* disagrees with the deregulatory, market-driven, supply-side perspective: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2026-2-9-the-housing-debate-is-finally-catching-up-to-reality
*the quotes here are intentional as those of us who are professional housing practitioners understand that we don't deal in solutions; we deal in mitigation strategies
One of those mitigation strategies is making sure we have access to those programs and subsidies that can help fill the gap between what it costs to build housing units and how much homeowners and tenants can afford to pay for those housing units. Many of those programs, at the state level at least, are now tied to NYS Pro-Housing Community status. Columbia County is the only county in the state to have each and every one of its component municipalities achieve this certification. About half of those municipalities completed their own certifications; I completed the other half (with much-valued assistance from building departments throughout the county).
I'm always happy to welcome new attendees of the bi-monthly County Housing Task Force meetings, and/or readers may contact me directly at cbrown@columbiaedc.com. I'm also a Hudson resident and not particularly difficult to accidentally bump into. If anyone would like to have a conversation about the strategies described above or, better yet, how they can help, feel free to say hello.
So, to recap:
DeleteYou are a professional middleman for the government, in mid-Hudson Valley, coordinating grants and PDFs related to housing?
I.e. We pay you with our tax dollars to apply for grants (more of our tax dollars) to subsidize housing costs of a politically chosen subset of residents (with our tax dollars) driven up by the very regulations your 'task forces' coordinates?
It sounds less like a housing strategy and more like a jobs program for people who enjoy Zoom forums and memorizing acronyms.
And your "results" is bringing our own tax dollars back to us, but with various strings attached (the ADU scheme is ridiculous, we know several residents who opted to avoid the grant given the red tape and essentially giving the state the right to control a private asset, for a pittance of money, for a decade).
Have you ever helped to build or renovate a house yourself or is your experience purely on the admin / gov side?
This is an interesting area of policy... if you do indeed help reform Zoning across the County, to enable more private developers, that is good for sure.
I.e. Remove red tape, update zoning.
We'd applaud that, more market-rate housing!
What is one example of a house / housing development built today that owe its existence to a specific action you took?
Please share where your individual decision was the deciding factor in the project’s success, or an enabling factor that was a blocker before.
There must be many, at least outside Hudson?
If you reply with a list of 10 homes built directly because of an action you took, that no one else could have taken, or thought of taking, prior to your hiring, we will be fans!
We will write more on the rest later and publish long form. This is an interesting area, you must be familiar with Glaeser's work on this and frankly, it would be interesting to get your take on Klein's Abundance book/movement.
p.s. Why have you, our intrepid "Housing Development Coordinator" and Michelle Tullo "Housing Justice Director", not coordinated a just "mitigation" strategy (read, picked a legal site) for the $9.5m HCR / LIHTC grant that was destined for the ill conceived and executed, and now halted, Mill Street project?
Just think, you can then claim to have brought in an additional 9 m.i.l.l.i.o.n_d.o.l.l.a.r.s of "grants", that is $3m per year of full-time employment.
And all you have to do is convince 3 parties who you are in touch with, to move the project to an appropriate and already identified by the City of Hudson, site.
Also, if you don't manage that, does that mean that you now have to say you effectively lost the County $6m of grants, or do you just count the potential grants you have secured (independent of whether residents actually received them)?
HCS, I’m not interested in engaging in a back and forth with you here. I wanted to give Gossips readers some information about county-wide housing efforts, and that’s what I’ve done.
DeleteThat is your choice.
DeleteBut noted that a person paid with our tax dollars, does not want to share a verifiable example - an outcome - of the work that he claims to already have done.
This, ladies and gentleman, is one of the reasons why most things that government touches in New York state (healthcare, housing, labor regulation) is expensive and not working properly.
Chris - were genuinely interested in learning more about your zoning advances, and impressed that you know Strong Towns and may be the only person the county that knows all the housing acronyms from Albany... seems like that paid-for-knowledge is only available to your CEDC colleagues and Michelle Tullo.
Sad.
Now we will have to go and figure it out ourselves, and yet we are not paid, like you are with, with everyone property tax and income tax dollars.
There’s so much exaggeration and misinformation in the News 10 story. I know nuance and detail hard these days for a third tier market local news outlet in a time where many get their news from Facebook, but come on. Nobody is repealing any STR restrictions. They are just allowing the current RESIDENT OWNER OCCUPIED ones, which there are so few left, to do more days since the current limit is arbitrary and they cannot be rented out long term anyway since the owners are residents some or most of the time. We are trying to help people afford to keep their homes and raise the lodging tax revenue that was decimated by the original law and did not help lower rents and likely created many vacant second homes.
ReplyDeleteThe groups pushing this misinformation are similar to the NRA. They will fight any legislation, no matter how reasonable, to regulate something because they will use every opportunity to get their name out there and fundraise to make the money, as John said, to pay themselves. This is their raison d’être. Also, the hypocrisy around this is astounding. The council placed a moratorium on new STRs so that a study could be done and data collected. But they never did it and pushed the law forward anyway. Now all of a sudden they want a vacancy study. Which I fully support, because I don’t change my beliefs depending on which “side” wants it. And let’s not forget the law’s champion Rebecca Wolfe… To correct HCS, she did not break the letter of the law. But she did break her “spirit” of the law and what she publicly says about STRs and tourism in general. And it seems very self serving to eliminate your competition by banning non owner occupied STRs, then to run your own via the carve out you created, but now are against again. It’s hard to keep up with, I know. But some of us have memories and also read articles and not just the headlines posted on social media.
Either way, I have no skin in this game. I’m fortunate enough to live in my home full time and don’t care to ever be a landlord or STR host. But I am for seeing this city be successful and also finding new ways to make revenue, because I’d rather have tourist pay our taxes over middle class homeowners and renters. But at the very worst, all of these bone headed policies just raise the value of my home by keeping housing scarce via disincentives for development and landlords giving up and selling to richer people who fix them up and make the city more attractive. I’m not asking for that; I’d rather keep the mom and pop landlords renting to people at reasonable prices; many of those renters are my friends. But in any case, thanks for the equity, dum dums 😘