A Warren County family earning a median income of $78,000, willing to invest 30% of that income in housing, should not expect to spend less than $325,000 on a home. To buy a house in Bolton Landing, that same family would need an additional $350,000.
Forty-seven percent of the Warren County households that rent rather than own housing pay more than 30% of their income for shelter, meaning that they are officially “cost-burdened.” Families spending more than half their income on housing are considered “severely cost-burdened.”
The challenge of finding or, more accurately, creating housing that a working family can afford was the subject of a “Workforce Housing Forum” held at the Lodge at Schroon Lake in Schroon Lake, NY on March 5.
Sponsored by the Adirondack Community Foundation, the forum drew more than one hundred representatives of non-profit organizations, privately-owned businesses and federal, state and local governments.
“We have a housing affordability crisis in the Adirondacks. We all know that. The question is, what are we doing about it?” ACF chairman and Pilot Knob resident Bill Creighton asked in his opening remarks.
Unique among the many programs underway to address the Adirondack Park’s housing affordability crisis: “Accelerate Workforce Housing,” a multi-year partnership of New York State and the Adirondack Community Foundation. Officials announced the launch of the brand-new initiative at the March 5 forum.
According to Steve Hunt, a North Country director for New York’s Empire State Development corporation, the $3.5 million partnership “creates a direct pipeline for new housing across the Adirondack Park… It helps ensure that the people who keep the region running can afford to live here year round.”
Hunt added, “Starting with the 2020 pandemic, we saw a surge of interest in property here, from second home buyers to Short-term rental investors and lodgers. While that growth was exciting, it squeezed our year-round workforce out of the housing market.”
By opening new, non-market rate housing to middle class families earning 120 to 200% of the Area Median Income, the initiative is “a tool to help the teachers, the healthcare aides and nonprofit workers who are being priced out of the very communities they serve,” said Hunt.
“Accelerate Workforce Housing” is funded by a $3 million grant from New York State and $500,000 raised by the Adirondack Community Foundation and the Cloudsplitter Foundation from among their institutional, family and individual donors. The Hearst Foundation provided a $250,000 matching grant.
Among other things, the initiative will: establish a Housing Capital Revolving Loan Fund to provide flexible financing for both nonprofit and private developers building housing within the Blue Line; provide technical assistance to Adirondack towns and villages anxious to overcome regulatory obstacles and expand workforce housing within their communities; fund preliminary engineering plans, architectural drawings and infrastructure assessments to advance housing projects from the planning to the construction stage; and leverage philanthropic and municipal resources to fund workforce housing projects.
As the loans to developers originated by “Accelerate Workforce Housing” are repaid, the revolving fund will be replenished and help finance additional housing, Hunt said.
The loans will be administered by the Development Authority of the North Country, said Michelle Capone, its executive director.
The Lake George Village-based Lake Champlain-Lake George Regional Planning Board will be responsible for providing technical, pre-development and other types of assistance to the Park’s municipalities.
“A public-private model, where a combination of private philanthropy, municipal and New York state funding, working with a nonprofit or private developer using low-cost construction methods, can make the equation work,” said the Adirondack Community Foundation’s Bill Creighton. “We can build workforce housing and offer it to people at a price they can afford.”
