The Hudson Valley region”™s housing market faces challenges now and in coming decades brought on by an aging population, declining state and federal housing funds and an extreme affordability gap in rental housing, according to a recently released annual report from Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress.
A regional public policy, planning and advocacy organization based in Newburgh, Pattern for Progress found the nine-county region”™s housing market is “treading water” again this year in its report, “Housing the Hudson Valley: Unlocking the Opportunities.” The region”™s housing market “has not shown significant signs of recovery” from the Great Recession, the survey found.
Among the pressing issues confronting the region”™s public and private sectors, an aging population will increase demand for senior housing over the next 20 years. The region”™s 65-and-over population has shown “tremendous growth,” the report noted, increasing nearly 23 percent from 1990 to 2010, when it made up nearly 14 percent of the valley”™s total population. The senior population is projected to increase 43 percent from 2010 to 2030, when residents 65 and over will make up nearly 19 percent of the region”™s total population, according to the Cornell University Program on Applied Demographics.
That demographic trend will slow “dramatically” by 2040, according to the report, with six of the region”™s nine counties projected to show showing a decline in their senior populace.
The various housing options sought by aging baby boomers “will provide opportunities in construction, home improvement and a variety of service industries,” the report noted. Pattern for Progress officials cautioned, though, that if senior housing is built and empty school buildings adapted as residences for the elderly, “Codes and land use policy must remain flexible to meet the needs of other age cohorts as the demographics change again” after 2030.
The report said the lack of affordable rental and ownership housing impedes economic development in the region. Building affordable homes “creates a more competitive market and stronger opportunity for industry to locate or expand in the Hudson Valley.”
But corporations attracted to the Hudson Valley should be encouraged to pay employees at living wage rates to close the “extreme” affordability gap in rental housing.
Using a federal affordable rent standard that equates housing costs with not more than 30 percent of a renter”™s gross income, a National Low Income Housing Coalition study cited in the Pattern report found that 62 percent of renters in both Westchester County and Rockland County are unable to afford a two-bedroom apartment at the federal fair market rent based on their average wage rate. In Putnam County, the study calculated that 61 percent of renters this year pay substantially more than 30 percent of their wages for housing, followed by 58 percent in Orange County and 57 percent in Dutchess County.
Hudson Valley communities and local housing cannot rely on government funding programs to close or narrow that affordability gap. Funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grant Program declined 22 percent from 2008 to 2012 in the region. Another critical and widely used HUD funding source, the HOME Investment Partnerships program, decreased its Hudson Valley funding by 46 percent over the same four-year period that began with the Great Recession.
As the Pattern for Progress report pointed out, those federal program funds are used by nonprofit housing agencies, often working in partnership with private developers, to leverage private investments “that result in an enormous boost to local economies.”
To foster a continuing discussion of the region”™s housing issues and promote much-needed housing development, Pattern for Progress this month is launching a Center for Housing Solutions. Founding partners include MJJ Builders Corp. in Warwick, Kearney Realty & Development Group Inc. in Carmel, Jacobowitz & Gubits L.L.P. in Walden, Regan Development Inc. in Ardsley, Rural Ulster Preservation Co. in Kingston and Community Preservation Corp. in New York City.
