Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan again has asked the city Common Council to repeal a two-year-old zoning law that she says has stalled housing development in the city and, in effect, escalated rental costs.
Late last week, Sheehan sent a letter to the council asking that they adopt a new ordinance to change affordable housing guidelines. The mayor’s proposal calls for zoning rules that require developers to make 5% of their units affordable to people earning 100 percent of the area’s median income, instead of the current 60 percent requirement. She said the idea is to promote development, particularly at a time when New York’s capital city has been allocated $200 million in the current state budget for downtown revitalization.
"Especially when we have a governor who wants to invest $200 million in downtown. And people have responded to the surveys that the state has put out and one of the No. 1 needs and demands is for more housing downtown. It's not going to get built until or unless this council fixes our inclusionary zoning."
As of Tuesday afternoon, the mayor said she has not heard back from the council in response to her letter. Although she said the topic was discussed during a caucus meeting Monday.
The mayor says new housing projects have slowed substantially in the city since a 2023 zoning change was enacted. Before 2023, builders proposed approximately 1,000 new market rate apartments in the city. After the change, that number dropped to fewer than 200 proposed units each year.
The current rules make projects too expensive to build, Sheehan said. At the same time, Sheehan says Troy and Schenectady are seeing growth because they do not have the same limitations.
Now, the law requires that affordable homes be reserved for families earning less than $50,000 annually. But, Sheehan contends that housing for low-income families is already being built thanks to subsidy and tax credit programs.
The lynchpin, the critical component to the city’s housing formula success, says Sheehan, is middle-income families. Those families often do not qualify for subsidies. But, at the same time, they cannot afford new market-rate apartments. As a result, Sheehan says people choose to move out of the city. Adopting the new ordinance would change that, she said.
Under Sheehan, Albany updated its citywide zoning code in 2017 to make sure new apartment buildings included some low-income homes, rather than only expensive ones.