Early voting in New York begins Saturday and as candidates make their final appeals to their constituents, affordability continues to top the list of voter concerns. One major way affordability manifests in the day-to-day is in housing. WAMC's Annie Bennett with our Southern Adirondack Bureau Chief Aaron Shellow-Lavine who’s done some reporting on the issue ahead of election day.
Annie Bennett: So, Aaron, with the broad issue of housing affordability within the scope of the election, how have you approached this as a reporter?
Aaron Shellow-Lavine: Well, you know, having been in Saratoga Springs for a number of years at this point, I can pretty much top-of-mind break down a couple of the larger profile developments. On the outskirts of town, sort of towards the west side, you've got, at least in my mind, the most recent ribbon-cutting for a finished development of low-income workforce housing, and then downtown, right at the center of the going out scene in Saratoga Springs, you've got a demolition project upon which a five-story, real luxury, $3,000-$4,000 a month condominiums will go up. That's right on Caroline Street. It's like, again, in the heart of the drinking scene in in Saratoga Springs.
Bennett: I didn't know Saratoga Springs had a drinking scene.
Shellow-Lavine: Oh, notoriously. And so, to me, that dichotomy of the development going up right there was really interesting. So I wanted to make sure that that was sort of at least the core start of this piece. I sat down with Mayor John Safford, who, to his credit, has been hard at work getting a lot of workforce development and, you know, affordable units up. He tells me that in the next couple of years about 1,000 of those — on the more affordable end — units set to go up in and around the core of the city. He's really focused on right now updating the comprehensive plan because for him that'll help the city really outline the next steps to, you know, continue some of that development going forward.
John Safford: That comprehensive plan was very protective of the Greenbelt. So therefore, if you're going to have growth, the comprehensive plan showed much more density downtown, and that's what you're seeing. The second question is why it would be luxury condos, and part of the problem there is any developer — again, people love and hate developers — they do this because they make a profit, right? I mean, this is America.
Bennett: And you've also done some reporting on the city's unified development ordinance (UDO) recently, and that sort of plays into this conversation, right?
Shellow-Lavine: Yeah. So a lot of the reporting that I've done, at least for for this, has resulted in local zoning makes a whole lot of difference, as much as state candidates and federal candidates want to say [otherwise]. A lot of the pressure comes down to locally zoning, making it more, I guess, affordable and easy to build units and more housing that is more accessible to the average person.
On that topic, Mayor Safford has taken a controversial stand towards the city's UDO, essentially the more controversial part of things being on demolitions surrounding historically or architecturally protected homes. That demo part of the UDO changes have been postponed, but Safford still wants to keep that momentum. A lot of the controversy, he kind of sees as playing into this larger sort of push to get more people involved in updating the city's comprehensive plan. Take a listen to at least what he had to say there.
Safford: If you want to have what I consider a more dynamic city, I mean, we can turn into a Charleston, right, where nobody can afford to live, you know, and everybody loves being there. But you know what kind of a city do we want, right? And so, the what's happening? The interest from the public now, hopefully, we can take and turn that into a higher level of interest in our comprehensive plan and the vision of the city.
Shellow-Lavine: So that leads pretty nicely into a conversation I had with Mark Castiglione, who is the executive director of the Capital District Regional Planning Commission. The organization has done some pretty awesome and thorough analysis of local developments throughout the Capital Region, obviously, and he again backs that idea up that the key part to all of this is local zoning laws.
Mark Castiglione: The comprehensive planning process is where communities, you know, really say who we are as a people and how should we live in the future, and what should our community look like, and and who do we want to live in our community. And, you know, I think it's a powerful process, small "d" democratic process, where people can say what they want to see where and what they don't want to see where.
I think through that process you can really articulate a vision for, you know, the future of your community and how your community will decide to ensure that you know people from all ages and all backgrounds can, you know, be a productive member of that community.
Bennett: What are some of the bottom line statistics that you've been seeing about this?
Shellow-Lavine: Right. So, just again, some of the really interesting stuff from Castiglione's organization: wages within the Capital Region have risen around 15% to 20% over the past three decades. It depends on, you know, actual municipalities. Housing prices across the board have gone up 40%, so we're just not keeping up to pace. That's an issue. First-time home buyers have also reached the 40-year-old mark for the first time ever. Usually, that's late 20s, early 30-year-olds.
Bennett: Not anymore.
Shellow-Lavine: Exactly, we are seeing 40-year-olds buying their first homes. So, good luck to folks like us.
Bennett: How have you been seeing the issue of housing affordability pop up in your coverage of local elections?
Shellow-Lavine: Yeah, so specifically the race for the 113th State Assembly District, we've got incumbent Democrat Carrie Woerner. She has, of course, made affordability a key platform for her to be running on. She supports a ton of different measures, you know, to really increase what she's focusing on is just home ownership, getting more people into more homes.
Carrie Woerner: I think we also need to be figuring out how to do things with tiny home communities, how to do things with building the starter home, the 1500-square foot, 1200-square foot house on a small lot where it becomes a starter home for people or a downsize option for retirees who are looking to sell their big family home, but still retain home ownership.
Shellow-Lavine: And then on the other end of things, you've got Republican Allen Caruso. He's also, again, in favor of increasing that housing stock for, again, more people into more homes.
Allen Caruso: Cutting regulations and red tape on building houses so that we can build them quicker. You know, we could also look at providing incentives. We have Knowles Atomic Power Lab here, right? It's the second nuclear training facility for the Navy in the United States. The other one is in Charleston.
We can look at, you know, possibly programs and incentives for active duty and veterans to be able to afford to buy a house. I think also first-time home buyers. What incentives and what kind of tax benefits can we provide, you know, to first-time home buyers to be able to afford to buy a house and, you know, start to build a family?
Shellow-Lavine: And then I just want to note the throughline there. Caruso brings up Charleston, which makes it two times that Saratoga has been compared to Charleston in this reporting. I don't know what that means, but I will work hard to try and get to the bottom of it.
