Standing inside the rotunda at Albany City Hall, Dorcey Applyrs and a representative from Camoin Associates, an economic development consulting firm, discussed their findings and recommendations from a recently concluded housing audit. The audit, which looked at housing and demographic data from Jan. 1, 2019, to the present – the period during which inclusionary zoning rules have been on the books in Albany – found that there are fewer people per household, increasing the demand for smaller housing units.
Tom Dworetsky, director of research at Camoin Associates, highlighted four different factors influencing the city’s housing conditions.
“First, most of the city's housing sites ... are underutilized, and many properties require significant rehab," he said. "Second, rising construction costs and higher rates make new development difficult, especially without support. Third, affordability pressures are increasingly concentrated within the city, rather than shared regionally. And finally, we're seeing diverging needs between lower income renters facing deep cost burdens and higher income residents looking for modern amenity-rich options.”
Citing these factors, Mayor-elect Applyrs’ office provided a variety of recommendations on how to address the housing shortage. She keyed in on reconsidering the city’s inclusionary zoning rules, which are designed to promote affordable housing development but which detractors say hinder development overall.
Dworetsky explained that while the policy did bring in some new units, it didn’t address the initial gap between needs of low-income tenants and high-income residents.
“So the policy, while it's helping introduce some new units that are affordable into the market, it isn't targeting where the gap is most severe," he said. "So, it's really important to recognize that private development is already difficult in the current market. Many projects, even pure market rate loans require tax abatements to move forward. So, in that context, it isn't necessarily realistic to expect that private development can shoulder significant affordability requirements on its own.”
Housing advocacy organizations, such as Housing for All and United Tenants of Albany, helped pass Albany’s inclusionary zoning Law in 2019. The ordinance required developers making buildings with more than 50 units to dedicate 5% of the building to affordable housing. In 2023, the Albany Common Council passed an update to the amendment, increasing the percentage of affordable units as the development grows.
Developments with 20 to 49 units needed to allot 7% of those units to affordable housing, with the percent incrementally increasing to 13% for development with more than 75 units. The update also required developers to make the units affordable to renters who make 60% or less of the area median income. At the presentation for the audit, Applyrs said one fix to the housing crisis could be to create a revised inclusionary zoning framework.
“I have not found one person who would argue that we want people to have a safe roof over their head," she said. "And we all agree that there should be affordable housing in this city, as we heard in the audit report, there are some of us, some of our residents, who can afford to pay more and want to pay more. Unfortunately, we don't have the market for them, and we need to create that market. I don't think luxury housing is a dirty word. I think if there are people who want to pay more, we should have the housing stock for them, because if we don't, we lose them to another municipality.”
But tenant advocates like Canyon Ryan, executive director at United Tenants of Albany, say this recommendation focuses too much on high-income earners and developers and not enough on low-income Albany tenants.
“I felt like it didn't actually demonstrate what the difference was between the 2017 version and the 2023 version," she said. "Other than there's a lot of external costs that need to be taken into account, which I don't disagree with, but to say we need to, like, wash this policy, or readdress the entire thing, reanalyze it, I just don't know that that is like the same findings that I have.”
Ryan added that the presentation pushed Albany's tenant needs to the side, which he believes could effectively result in more homelessness in the city.
”We do need new housing, but the housing that I think that we need is extremely low-income housing," she said. "The proposed solution here is trickle down housing, which is build new luxury housing, and then those higher income tenants will move into that housing, and then suddenly low-income tenants will benefit from this surplus of vacancies. I think that it's the exact opposite. I think we need to provide extremely low-income housing so that the tenants that are struggling now are able to get situated, feel comfortable where they reside, and then the result will be actually the same, but with a decrease in homelessness, because we know that with high development with high luxury development rates and high affluence rates, that is what results in homelessness.”
Applyrs’ calls for review of the city’s inclusionary zoning practices comes at a time when the Albany Common Council is considering amendments to the current inclusionary zoning laws.
When asked about the amendments, Applyrs didn’t take a firm position.
“We have a unique opportunity to use this tool and the recommendations, one of which was ensuring that any inclusionary zoning legislation that we put forward should take into consideration the market and there should be better coordination and collaboration between all of our stakeholders," she said. "That includes our housing advocates, our Mayor's office, our council members, our developers, these conversations and policy can be made in a vacuum, and so we need to be at the table coming up with solutions that are right-size for Albany and right-size for our market.”
