The Albany County Legislature is scheduled to hold a public hearing tonight on bolstering the availability of affordable housing.
The Affordable Housing Initiatives Act would create a committee tasked with the creation, development and administration of a plan to address what the Legislature is calling the county’s “affordable housing crisis.”
According to language in the proposal, 41% of Albany County renters spend more than one-third of their income on housing, and renters’ wage increases have not kept up with the rising price of apartments.
Legislature Chair Joanne Cunningham says the legislation goes hand in hand with another law passed late last year that established affordable housing as a public purpose of the county.
“This is part two of our efforts to operationalize and make changes in Albany County to establish more affordable housing,” Cunningham said.
The Affordable Housing Committee would seek to increase the affordable housing stock within the county through a variety of means, including building new affordable housing units and repurposing existing spaces.
The committee would consist of five members – two appointed by the chair of the Legislature, two appointed by the Albany County executive and one appointment filled by the county Legislature’s majority Leader.
Each member would serve a three-year term, and the committee would fall under the purview of the Advance Albany County Alliance.
Cunningham says the Legislature would move quickly to establish the committee if the law is passed.
“We’ve already done a lot of internal work, so we are going to be continuing to move quickly on this, so we are ready to hit the ground running as soon as Feb. 9, ya know, if we secure passage on this,” Cunningham said.
Canyon Ryan is the executive director of United Tenants of Albany, an advocacy group that has previously called on the Legislature to repurpose buildings on the former Saint Rose campus as affordable housing, says the legislation overall is a good step.
However, he does have a few concerns about the board’s membership.
“It calls for people with experience in housing finance and, yes, we absolutely and obviously need experts and folks with experience, but I also think it’s important that we are hearing directly from the community in how these decisions are made,” Ryan said.
In addition to the creation of a dedicated committee, the law would also establish a revolving loan fund to help to encourage developers to build affordable housing.
The fund would be backed by an initial county investment of $1.6 million, according to the legislation.
Cunningham says the fund is similar to other models already used by the Advance Albany County Alliance.
“We will mirror it like these other loan funds that essentially have a construct of what do we want to see and encourage in the county,” Cunningham said.
She used hypothetical development at the former Saint Rose Campus as an example of something the revolving loan fund may be used for.
“’How can we support organizations that are coming to the county and saying here is my plan to do a development, it’s going to be Saint Rose, we want to buy a building in Saint Rose,’ I’m just thinking creatively here. ‘And we have financing but we need additional financing support,’ that is exactly the model that we use in these other kind of public constructs,” Cunningham said.
