These small towns have a major urban problem: rents are far too high

Spending time at home had become unbearable for Troy Mongillo and his girlfriend Amanda Pabon. Construction noise was constant, utilities were often shut off, and the insulation beneath their apartment was removed just before winter when the new owners of their building in Beacon, NY, converted the vacant retail space downstairs into a trendy bar. That's why they decided to move.

But the couple soon discovered what has become a reality in Beacon and the rest of the Hudson Valley, immediately north of New York City: affordable rental housing was hard to find. They were shocked by how few apartments were within their budget and how much landlords were demanding from them just to apply.

“I started to feel like there was no end in sight,” Mr. Mongillo said of the weeks they spent looking for a new home. “It felt very bleak.”

A growing housing crisis has gripped New York City and urban areas across the country, fueled by the rising cost of homeownership, rising rents and limited housing inventory. Now some places long considered more affordable are struggling with the same factors, as well as an influx of new pandemic-era residents and a boom in the number of homes being bought as second homes or listed on short-term rental platforms – making them increasingly out of reach become for tenants.

The challenges are acute in parts of the Hudson Valley, where fair market rents (a value calculated annually by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to gauge housing markets) have risen by as much as 45 percent in some places since 2019, said A report published last year by Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, a non-profit organization. For many in the region, rents have risen much faster than wages, where lower-income workers have seen their wages stagnate or even fall, the report said.

Buying a home has become more difficult, pushing more people into the rental market, said Adam Bosch, the group's president and CEO. That has pushed rents “higher and higher,” he said.

Jonathan Bix, the executive director of For the Many, a nonprofit that has led campaigns calling for housing reform at the state and local level in New York, said the Hudson Valley “has seen one of the sharpest increases in has seen housing costs anywhere in the state. In recent years.”

“People are paying completely unsustainable amounts of their income on housing,” he added.

Faced with an ever-deteriorating situation and unwilling to wait for lawmakers in Albany to address the crisis in a substantive way, several communities in the Hudson Valley have tried to take matters into their own hands by some of the most aggressive changes in housing policy in the state.

In Newburgh, a small city in Orange County where about 70 percent of people rent their homes, public officials have been battling the effects of gentrification and limited housing stock for years. In December, an investigation conducted by the city found that there was a vacancy rate Below five percent, Newburgh became the third community in the Hudson Valley and the state to declare a “housing emergency” and opt for rent stabilization for many older buildings after Kingston And Nyack. The move has temporarily frozen rents for more than 700 households while officials work to form a rent guidelines council to vote on annual rent adjustments.

Newburgh, Poughkeepsie and Kingston, as well as Albany, just north of the Hudson Valley, have passed for cause eviction laws that protect tenants from drastic rent increases and establish their right to renew their leases. Numerous other towns and villages in the region, including Woodstock, Saugerties and New Paltz, have adopted strict rules for short-term rentals.

“We've been forced to be creative,” said Mike Neppl, spokesman for the city of Newburgh. “In the absence of federal policy and in the absence of state policy, local leadership really matters.”

But local officials have faced an uphill battle. Newburgh's good cause eviction law was struck down in court after landlords filed suits to stop it, like those in Kingston and Albany. Mr. Neppl said he expected landlords would also challenge the city's rent control measures. like they did in Kingston.

Tackling the state's housing crisis was one of Governor Kathy Hochul's top priorities in 2023, and the governor, a Democrat, proposed ambitious legislation aimed at boosting housing construction and protecting renters, but state lawmakers were unable to ultimately unable to agree on how to approach the problem. . The chance that a major housing deal will be closed this year is uncertain.

Senators Robert Rolison, a Republican, and James Skoufis, a Democrat, who represent the mid-Hudson Valley, said they were optimistic that lawmakers in Albany would succeed in taking action on the housing crisis this year. They said they want to explore ways to reward high-density housing across the state, and have expressed support for certain tenant protections. Both have been hesitant to support statewide eviction legislation for charities.

“Housing is a very sensitive issue. It's like a Jenga tower: you pull out one block and the whole thing starts shaking,” Mr Skoufis said. “But we have to find a way to thread this needle.”

Many people recently looking for housing in the Hudson Valley said they struggled for weeks or months to find a place to live.

Katie Salmonson, 26, said she and her partner spent more than six months last year looking for a new home in Ulster County after their landlord told them he was selling the house in Ellenville, where they paid $900 a month to live in a first house. ground floor apartment with their son. Every day, Ms. Salmonson checked Facebook Marketplace, Zillow and Hotpads, she said. She even drove around looking for “for rent” signs.

“There was just nothing available, whether we could afford it or not,” said Ms. Salmonson, who works as a student retention and Title IX coordinator at a community college.

Although many homes in the area appeared empty, there were almost no homes to be found, Ms. Salmonson said, making her wonder if fewer property owners were choosing to rent to full-time residents.

People have long used Airbnb and other platforms to rent out cozy cottages or off-the-grid cabins in the rural region, but locals, government officials and others studying housing in the area say the number of short-term rentals appears to have skyrocketed . during the past years. In June 2022, for example there were 2,587 short-term rentals available in Ulster Countymore than anywhere else in the Hudson Valley, according to a check by the provincial controller, and they made up 12 percent of the county's rental stock. Such listings accounted for 45 percent of rental inventory in Greene County, according to the audit. (An Airbnb spokesperson declined to provide detailed company data on short-term rental properties in the region, but disputed that any increase in supply had significantly affected the availability of affordable housing.)

Ms Salmonson said she and her partner, who were already living paycheck to paycheck, eventually ran out of options and had to give up their budget. In the fall, they moved to a small two-bedroom trailer in nearby Accord, where rent is $2,000 a month, she said.

“I just needed a roof over my child's head,” Ms Salmonson said. “It just makes me cry.”

Mr. Mongillo, 41, and Ms. Pabon, 31, faced a different set of challenges. Neither of them drive, which limited the neighborhoods they could live in, and many landlords objected to their 40-pound German Shepherd mix, Eddy. Even when they found available rental properties within their $2,000 budget, they were told they didn't qualify because they didn't have $4,000 in the bank.

“We have sacrificed a lot. We have uprooted our lives and even shelved our commitment,” said Ms. Pabon, a project manager at a solar energy contractor. “It really made us aware of how close we were to homelessness.”

Early last year, Ms. Pabon and Mr. Mongillo, a bartender, moved into a new apartment in Poughkeepsie, which they secured after a sympathetic landlord lowered the asking rent to the same amount they had paid in Beacon.

Ms Pabon said she cried with relief when they were approved: “It seemed too good to be true.”

After the couple moved, their former apartment was renovated by the new owners. In January, the 900-square-foot apartment was put up for sale for $2,800 a month — $1,100 more than Ms. Pabon and Mr. Mongillo had paid to live there.

Potential tenants should be prepared to hear music from the bar below, the listing on broker.com warned. In return, they would live in “one of the coolest NYC-style apartments in Beacon.”