More on Hudson youth, and rents

In a comment on the previous post here about Hudson getting younger, 3rd Ward Alderman John Friedman noted that:

One problem that I hear from younger Hudsonians and those aspiring to be is that the cost of rental housing in the city has climbed precipitously (is that an oxymoron?) in the last year or so and make finding a decent place to live difficult for this particular demographic. The City is trying to figure out ways to stimulate a market response to this demand but that usually takes 2 years or so...

Speaking as a former Young Person, I can attest that every generation thinks that The Rent Is Too Damn High. But since complex issues like this require more than cursory analysis, below are some examples and considerations that might be taken into account:

1. In the documentary film Two Square Miles, recently screened at Basilica Hudson, a local resident complains that landlords are asking “six, seven hundred dollars" for an apartment, calling these prices “crazy.” It is suggested by some that “those people” are trying to “push all of us out.” Now, that interview was shot almost ten years ago. A decade later, I still see that same interviewee daily, walking his dog on Warren Street. He’s still here; he didn’t get pushed out, in spite of the alleged “craziness” of Hudson rents. 
2. Today, one can readily find on Craigslist listings such as this: a newly-remodeled three-bedroom apartment in uptown Hudson for under $1,000. Three young people could share it and pay just $325 each per month. (Does unsubsidized rent get any cheaper than that anywhere in the Hudson Valley, unless you’re prepared to live in a free-fire zone in Newburgh?) One can find many similarly-priced options on Craiglist; while offerings from local realtors tend to be more of the luxury variety.
3. If rents do need ameliorating, the main way the City of Hudson can help is to get its budget and taxes under control, since rents correlate closely to taxation here. Overall, private investment has been a great benefit to Hudson: derelict structures are saved, delinquent properties go back on the tax rolls, contractors get work doing renovations, and formerly-closed-up apartments go back on the rental market, increasing supply. But if a landlord is paying taxes that exceed their montly mortgage payment, that is going to add substantially to what they have to charge in rent just to hold onto their building. Few if any landlords will take a loss on a rental, and high taxes will lead to high rents.
4. Another strategy that could moderate rents would be for the City to encourage or require un(der)used properties to be activated again. One example is Galloway’s apartment building on the corner of Warren and 2nd street: it was cleared of tenants at purchase time nearly a decade ago, and inexplicably has remained empty ever since. Ditto the former “Apartments of Distinction” building at the corner of Union and 5th Street, formerly home to multiple families, There are many other examples of “warehoused” residential space all over town—I recall seeing a figure of as much as 15-20% of housing stock being empty here in one recent report. Get those apartments back on the market, and rents will surely come down, if the law of supply and demand is not an economic fiction.
5. As far as rents going up, it’s worth trying to sort out anecdotal reports from the actual situation before officials take any major action. If a couple of folks’ rents go up, and they talk a lot about it at a local bar frequented by young people, it becomes easy in a small town to jump to the conclusion that everyone’s rent is exploding—even when those two examples are exceptional. For example, just yesterday I went to watch football at the newly-purchased house of a Hudson “young person.” (That in itself is, anecdotally, a good sign.) There were about seven of us hanging out—two of whom had just moved to Hudson to work at a local business. They had been crashing on friends’ couches in search of place to live, and literally during the Patriots/Seahawks game, one of them got a call and they left to move into their new apartment. So what is the reality? Are rents going up too high, or are young people finding apartments? If rents are so problematic, why are young people moving here at a rate unheard of a decade ago? In short, the City might first want to try to collect some rigorous data to find out what is really happening on the ground, rather than acting in haste based on sketchy info.
6. It remains that Hudson has a tremendous amount of subsidized housing, per capita—certainly higher than any other municipality in the County. This subsidized housing stock has not diminished in the past 10-15 years. And it probably also ranks in the top five in the region in terms of providing affordable housing (again, per capita). In the Terrace apartments, for example, if your situations qualifies you, you can get an apartment at a rent which is pegged to your actual income: you only pay what you can actually afford at any given time. This is not something that most towns offer.
7. In that context, it would be useful to determine how Hudson rents compare to rents in other towns and small cities nearby. Is it more expensive to rent an apartment in Hudson than, say, Philmont? Kinderhook? Catskill? Albany? If one thinks that rents are too high in Hudson, where else would one go—and what would one be passing up by moving, in terms of either job or lifestyle opportunities? If you move to a place where rent is cheaper, will there be any work or anything to do after work in that place, or would it be cheaper precisely because it is dead? If housing is really hard to come by in Hudson, it must be even harder elsewhere; and to that extent, rental pressure is a New York State or American problem.

Our American capitalist system is an unfair one, and one that needs fixing. Even former Alderman Quintin Cross (a past master of divide-and-conquer local politics) acknowledges toward the end of Two Square Miles that it is “not the fault” of people who have embraced Hudson’s potential that our society remains full of economic and social ills. With that in mind, it would be good for City officials to consider ways to address the most catastrophic rental situations—such as when a building sells, and longtime renters are given minimal time to move out. Renters ought to have the right to a lease, and a reasonable amount of time to find new quarters if owners change. 

Like every place inhabited by humans, Hudson has some greedy landlords, some slumlords, as well as some elitists whose rental rates are calculated to enact some sort of social engineering. And like every place inhabited by humans, some people latch onto shallowly-understood buzzwords such as gentrification, deploying it as a social pose or way to assuage their own guilt over being privileged, without ever backing it up with actual data or acting meaningfully upon that concern. Gentrification is common in our society; people interested in really understanding and addressing are rare. If anything, thanks to Hudson’s situation, its resources, its walkability, its building stock, and most of all its people, the City may be better positioned than most rural towns to address with the profound flaws of that system.

As noted by that film’s co-producer Sven Huseby at Basilica the other night: if you visit similar towns around the country, one quickly realizes that Hudson’s survival and slow, steady improvement is not merely exceptional in America today, it is almost unique.