Common Ground Alliance considers ADK issues, including housing

ADIRONDACK PARK | The Adirondacks has a problem of too little housing stock. Or, depending on how you look at it, too much. But what attendees agreed upon at a virtual meeting of the Common Ground Alliance, was that the region is in acute need of policies and programs that will find places for indigenous Adirondack families to live. As it stands, those families have been forced out of their home communities by escalating housing values that can not be afforded on typical Adirondack incomes. Since these departing families tend to be young, that's led to plummeting populations in Adirondack schools which, said Daniel Kiefer-Bach, LivingADK's Community Development Specialist, have historically been the beating heart of a community in terms of education, but also in terms of economics and volunteerism. The Common Ground Alliance, created in 2007, is a coalition of Adirondack leaders and representatives who tackle some of the park's greatest challenges, including issues such as housing, recreation, climate change and economics. As the pandemic created a premium for Adirondack living space, housing has risen to perhaps the most challenging issue for those intent on seeing the park thrive. Striking is that nearly half of all homes in the Adirondacks are what the U.S. Census calls "vacant," meaning they are second homes, vacation homes or short-term rentals. The problem isn't that there are not enough houses, Kiefer-Bach said, it's that "too much of our housing stock is underutilized." Short-term rentals have become a particular bugaboo, as the fantastic sums that vacationers are willing to pay for a week's stay are often too much for a homeowner to resist. So a house that might have been rented out to a working family is now rented out to tourists who in some cases may pay in a long weekend what a landlord customarily received from a long-term renter in a month. "If you cannot limit short-term rentals you are ignoring a hemorrhaging wound," Kiefer-Bach. One potential tool is a deed restriction program that pays cash to people who agree to keep their homes out of the short-term rental market. "It's a very flexible and unique program," which has worked in other tourist destination towns such as Vail, Col., Kiefer-Bach said. Teresa Cheetham-Palen, a member of the Keene Town Board and Keene Housing Task Force, said STRs "are very lucrative for homeowners, so they are doing that in droves. We are pricing low and moderate wage earners out of the market, and that's a real problem for the community." As well as the problems manifested in the schools, where there are fewer children to support community hubs of activity, businesses have also struggled to find help among a vanishing workforce. "People are not moving to the Adirondacks to work for minimum wage," said Olivia Dwyer, program navigator for the Adirondack North Country Association. Jerry Delaney, executive director of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board, said STRs can't be made to absorb all of the blame, since they have in some ways helped fuel the economic growth the Adirondacks have seen during the pandemic. For example, he said they are critical for accommodating visitors during events and in the high season when hotels don't have the space. "They can't just be the devil," he said. And restricting STRs wouldn't solve the whole problem, said Dan Kelleher, special assistant for economic affairs for the Adirondack Park Agency. In the Lake Placid area, for example, there are roughly 700 short-term rentals in a community where the need for long-term housing is more than twice that. "We need the capability to build (new) units," he said. Other topics covered by Common Ground, along with their annual Blueprints for the Blue Line, can be found at commongroundadk.org.

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Common Ground Alliance considers ADK issues, including housing

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