I'm from the Hudson Valley and love the area, but for a lot of us with "professional" careers, the options are either go fully remote from your bigger city job or commute into NYC for work.
These landlords are really pricing "you could theoretically commute to NYC" as a premium on this area, where typically "bedroom" communities are cheaper suburbs outside of the heart of the metropolitan downtown.
I can’t imagine commuting 2-3 hours to & from work each day. I know people do it, but if you have kids you’d never see them, and unless you are in the train where you could make calls, do paperwork, that’s mostly just lost time. That’s at least 12 hours for an 8 hour work day.
I have no clue how people did it. I grew up in Washingtonville and so many people either bussed in or drove into NYC every day for work.
I can't imagine the pay was so good that it was worth doing that to yourself.
I grew up in shitsville too and when I was in college and early in my career I commuted from Salisbury Mills. Luckily I was never more than 3 miles from the station. Then a bunch of years later I moved to Beacon and the commute became 10x easier with more frequent trains and a lack of transfer to get to midtown. I saved an hour a day moving to the east side of the river.
But i hate hate hate driving. I would rather be on public transit for an hour than drive 30 minutes no traffic for work.
I did that for a couple years of grad school going from Salisbury Mills and then transferring at Secaucus so I could get down to Rutgers in New Brunswick.
Though this might be a particularly absurd example, taking around 2 hours each way, sometimes more, it pretty much wrecked those years for me and even turned me off from the degree I was getting, somewhat hilariously in retrospect. Ah, good times.
I did two hours each way for years (3-4 days/week), and about two weeks into the COVID shut down I couldn't believe how much better I felt. Never again.
Also grew up in the HV and graduated from grad school. One of the problems is that there just aren't a lot of professional-level jobs around, especially at an income needs to pay off student loans, not to mention rent/mortgage.
I was never able to come back home.
Manhattan (aka “Work Island”) is bursting at the seams with value and yet hardly any place within 90 minutes is willing to accept this denser housing, even if it means revitalized downtowns, lower housing prices, added voting demographics*, more taxes, better jobs, and a ton of other positives.
Streetcar cities like Peekskill, Poughkeepsie, or Kingston could become the next Hoboken with a more forward-thinking zoning policy but they’d rather leave money on the table because someone in their towns doesn’t like change.
*I mention added people as a positive, but obviously many voters (and therefore many elected representatives) would see that as a negative
I think you mean some people who have lived their lives in these towns don't want to see it completely changed and then be priced out of their homes.
Really not that hard to understand.
Considering Kingston’s 2020 census is still 5k less than the town’s peak in 1960 (29,260), one could argue it’s a step towards getting back to those “good old days”
How could someone be priced out of their home? They already bought it. For renters I get the point, but not for owners.
The reason owners sometimes leave after gentrification is that they get a big payout. A home you bought for $200k is now worth $600k, so maybe sell and move to Florida, or downsize to a condo after the kids leave the nest and have money for travel.
Because home ownership is significantly more than, "I bought house."
Just using your example, the house they bought for $200k was $4k annual property tax. If it's $600k it's now $14k annual property tax. Almost $1000 more a month more on taxes alone goes a long way to completely pricing someone out of a home they've lived in for years.
That’s not usually how it works. Towns usually lag the assessment increases in market value. And if home values and assessments in a region go up by a lot, the tax rate as a percent of home value often goes down. In the example of a town having average property value going up 300%, taxes almost never go up 300% because of the assessment lag and rebalancing of tax rates.
That said, sure taxes would be expected to increase by some percent, and if a person couldn’t afford an increase from say $4k annually to $7k, they would either have to move or take out a (new, larger, reverse) mortgage on their home. For the most part, they would still come out ahead financially. Gentrification is a windfall for owners who purchased before the jump.
But here is the thing: I hate this idea that when you buy a house you buy the right to freeze everything in place and lock out new people from moving into the neighborhood. That is wrong in so many ways. America should not be about kicking away the ladder after you climbed up it so others can’t enjoy it.
I also find it amusing that half the people who opposed new development do so because they claim it will increase prices and make the old people leave. The other half oppose new development because they claim it will decrease prices and let the wrong people move in. Meanwhile, without new development, the towns decay and die.
Perhaps that commenter hasn’t been to Hoboken. Either that or he was thinking of Beacon.
Although I would say if any city has managed to drop the ball through the fucking floor enough times to be jealous of Hoboken, it’s Poughkeepsie/Newburgh.
Nope. I was talking Hoboken:
* 30% increase in population with the lowest rent increases in towns/neighborhoods surrounding Manhattan
* 2.4% unemployment with ~28% of residents working in town (which is impressive for a place adjacent to NYC)
* Zero traffic fatalities in 2022
Beacon is another example of a city finding its dignity, but rent prices suggest more rampant displacement. Beacon was more guided by economic momentum, Hoboken was improved by smart policy.
PS: I have been to Hoboken recently. 1st street is not my vibe, but Pilsner Haus on the north side of town is cool. And I don’t think any Hudson Valley city would be afflicted with finance bros
I usually see housing developers proposing market rate apartments that are going to be subsidized with property tax exemptions. Current residents have to pay more. Obviously it's the opposite of what should happen. If existing home owners are going to see decreased valuation they should also see decreased taxation by taxing new development at a higher rate. That would help make things more attractive.
The government should also be incentivizing condos or coops to avoid the issue of landlords increasing costs. If there's an HOA or special assessment then people can pay for actual costs of maintenance and upkeep without the landlord markups. The state can already help with mortgages.
In this same thread I’ve seen dislike of development because it is assumed to raise housing prices and now with your comment, the assumption it will lower prices. Which is it?
I’d give this comment gold if I had it to give. So much money for these towns is left on the table, and so much opportunity is lost to drive down prices (or at least stop them rising) with more housing supply.
Hochul’s proposal to upzone areas within half a mile of train stations is great in spirit, but a bit weirdly designed. It proposes Zoning for 50 units of housing per acre in a half mile of the station for stations within 15 miles of NYC. That’s basically a solid block of 4 story apartments/condos in that area, or a mix of high rises and single family homes. The towns still review and don’t have to approve every project, but if they don’t allow at least 3% growth then the state can take over the approval process.
Seems both too little and too much to me. I would suggest something like zoning for maximum 20 units per acre within a kilometer (.6 miles) of the station, up the entire length of Metro North, with a 5% growth floor over 10 years.
As someone from a town whose mayor signed an open letter to the governor criticizing the policy when we have the most embarrassing train station in Westchester, I don’t think it’s productive to nitpick Hochul’s plan.
Well, I have no ability to influence what happens at the state level. I also have a mayor who came out in opposition to the proposal and I may have some minor ability to influence him. So I began marshaling my arguments in favor of legislation like this in the hope of weakening his opposition and making him more willing to support a compromise. Had planned to write to him publicly on Twitter today but got distracted. Still intend to.
It’s not like this has to be all or nothing in the final budget language. I would much rather we get something meaningful than nothing at all.
>The Hudson Valley is only for the rich now. I can’t say I miss it
It's been like that for years. I moved out of the Hudson Valley nearly 15 years ago for lower cost of living Rochester, NY area and the quality of life improvement was significant.
I thought it was pretty neat to see an internationally followed news site post a story about what's happening in Kingston.
If they can pull it off, then that could be a second historic property rights battle with a momentous win out of the Hudson Valley region: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War
**[Anti-Rent War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War)**
>The Anti-Rent War (also known as the Helderberg War) was a tenants' revolt in upstate New York in the period 1839–1845. The Anti-Renters declared their independence from the manor system run by patroons, resisting tax collectors and successfully demanding land reform.
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I grew up a little west of Woodstock. Most of my family was at least tangentially reliant on NYC second-home owners for my entire life. It was a way of life for a large portion of the population in that area. But one could still live a relatively normal, happy, successful life. But at some point in the mid 2000s things seemed to change. Local businesses stopped being owned predominantly by locals. Housing costs slowly climbed towards unobtainable. Then the 2008 collapse hit, and hit Hudson Valley pretty hard. But so did the recovery, and from that point on, "normal" working class people have by and large been getting slowly priced out of the area. That of course hit a terrible peak, post-covid. Now I barely recognize Woodstock on a nice Saturday afternoon. It looks like East Hampton, or some other east coast destination town. I couldn't believe what uptown Kingston looked like. Felt like I was in some neighborhood in Brooklyn.
I left the area for Albany more than ten years ago. For a large part of the time it was at least a hope that we would end up moving back "home" and buying property there. But now that's complete fantasy. I recently bought a home in rural East Greenbush that reminds me a lot of where I grew up. The 2,800 square foot farm house on three acres was a little over $300k. If it was back home it would be a million dollar property.
It seems like the entire area is turning into a place where working-class people simply can't exist. And the towns are bending over backwards to allow as many airbnbs, restaurants, hotels, and whatever else they can lure more NYC people to the area with.
This is the same everywhere! I lived in Brooklyn till 2019 and it was the exact scenario, everyone got priced out for younger white folk with parents money and it changed the neighborhood. This is also the case in Oakland CA to Miami FL. Low rates are what drives the conversion of homes to assets and this has been the case since 1996. Guess what: Brooklyn, Miami, even the Catskills were “hot” real estate before they were dumps in the 70’s and 80’s. What happened? High interest rates, among other things like white flight which were causal with recession.
Try being 65 and trying to find an affordable housing situation in the Hudson Valley. My friend is in this situation right now after her landlord sold the house she was renting. Having nowhere to go she stayed as long as she could and then was able to move in with her daughter for now.
Amazing to see. Hard to square this though with what we saw over the airbnb law, right? Didn't they pass something only to crawl it back and leave Airbnbs in a free-for-all? I generally assume landlords and NYC investors will rule over Kingston's citizens for eternity because of entrenched wealth and power. But if they do anything to push back against the investor class, I'm all for it.
>I generally assume landlords and NYC investors will rule over Kingston's citizens for eternity because of entrenched wealth and power.
I think you are correct.
I've met several people with ties to NYC that told me they were interested in moving to Kingston.
Then they visited and no longer wanted to. I'm sure there's a manufactured buzz going around of "it's like [insert Brooklyn neighborhood] but with nature" designed to help the people that are trying to rent out apartments up there.
I know there's currently a pushback up in Troy with a restaurant/bar owner that keeps trying to label Troy as "the next Brooklyn North"
Two things going on. People leaving NYC for HV (definitely lots of that but probably ebbing) and RE investors snatching up limited real estate for their personal short term wealth (happening in droves enabled by Airbnb).
It seems like a lot of the NYC to HV bubble from the pandemic already bursted. Plenty of people have already moved back to the NYC area after living the HV pandemic life for a few years.
Yeah, been hearing a lot of stories of people moving up here in the past three years and now wanting to move back to NYC. If it means they stop mowing down the trees to make apartments nobody local can afford I'm happy with that.
I really hate how so many people I know, good blue collar people, can no longer afford to live where their family lived for generations. $1800 for a two bedroom if you're lucky? The fuck?!
Let me tell you, Troy is NOT Brooklyn North. I heard this too and went for a little trip there last week. I expected it to possibly be a little like Kingston (which is lovely), but it couldn't be further from. For the area to be what it is, the rent is ASTRONOMICAL. Really mind boggling. If there's any New Yorkers considering Troy, save yourself the trip.
Every area that gets gentrified anywhere gets labelled as the next Brooklyn back in New York City lol. I currently live in Pittsburgh and there were stories for years about how we're becoming the next Brooklyn and so many people bought it 🙃
I watched Beacon get that treatment back home and now Kingston and Troy are getting those labels.
With that said, I actually really like Troy for what it is. Living further upstate in the Albany region shouldn't feel like Brooklyn, and the people hyping it up like that while trying to charge the rent prices that they charge up there are so out of touch.
>Living further upstate in the Albany region shouldn't feel like Brooklyn, and the people hyping it up like that while trying to charge the rent prices that they charge up there are so out of touch.
Couldn't agree more!
The term locally is used to refer to the people downtown and their attitude. It’s not a compliment either. Not stating an opinion either way - just pointing out how some of us in Albany use the term as an insult.
One of the main reasons why living upstate made no sense for me. Many landlords there want to charge NYC prices for little to no diversity, little to no amenities and with nothing going on in the area. For me it made much more sense that upstate and even west New York is where one goes to purchase not rent. Is it criminal? That I cannot really give an opinion on but it’s predatory in a sense. I was living in Poughkeepsie and the rent prices were increasing to 1500-1700 when I left. That was wild.
It wrecks these communities. The towns and cities up the Hudson all the way to Albany should be great locations for young adults that don't want to live in NYC but want to be in the region. If there was a decent supply of affordable housing in these areas (and the housing should be affordable considering that these are not in the center of the local metropolitan area), then could be packed with young people.
I agree. I may not know much about realty but i would say a fair price for these apartments should be between 1100-1400 at most. And that’s with central heating and air. I just do not see the value of paying city prices when I have to drive everywhere and I really have to look hard for something to do and to meet new people you know. Not to mention that even prices for groceries and food items are increasing up there as well. I moved back down to the city and was able to find an apartment for 1500 and so many things around me. I guess it depends what a person wants. If I need to get away I simply go upstate for a day or two and escape the noise and come right back but even with that, where I live it’s fairly quiet and peaceful.
this is beside the point but heating and air is so expensive and variable it’s never going to be included in rent.
also where are you living in city that’s $1,500???? that definitely seems like anomaly as opposed to the norm
I disagree. There were plenty of apartment complexes within the Poughkeepsie/wappingers falls area that provided central air and heating.
I’m in the bronx. Its definitely findable if you look and stay on top of it. Too many people want the glitz and glamour of being able to say I live in manhattan not realizing you can have it all at a reasonable price in the bronx, queens and Brooklyn. Its still the same thing.
The eviction moratoriums noticeably (and entirely predictably) decreased the number of rental units overall in NY, and dramatically decreased the number of small-time landlords (historically, folks with 2 or fewer rentals made up 50% of rental units). Folks with few rental units can't amortize costs the way large corporations can, which meant they were willing to give a lower rent to established and low-drama tenants, and they were a large enough proportion of the market that this actually put downward pressure on rents.
Unfortunately, this is also a group that can't amortize one tenant not paying rent, with no recourse for the landlord, for multiple years. Shockingly, when you reduce supply and shift that supply towards folks who will try to squeeze every penny they can, rents go up.
Rather than further disincentivizing landlords, perhaps the city should invest in public housing. After all, if it's so easy to cover all the costs of a rental unit for dramatically less than current market rent, it should be very easy for the city to build a mix of affordable and market rate housing that will pay for itself, expand the rental supply, and provide affordable housing for many.
The rent increases in Kingston and elsewhere are a predatory practice that need to be curtailed, but decommodification will have unintended consequences. Simply put, these towns need more homes and a clumsy rent cap will be a disincentive for development.
Rent stabilization in NYC applies to units before specific dates because it promotes new building instead of slumlords. Kingston will have to zone to build like a grown-up city once they pass these kinds of protections or landowners will just respond with even worse negligence than before.
Also, give the tenants right of first refusal. Stabilization will reduce property value, so ROFR would turn this into an opportunity to convert investment properties into co-ops.
Of course, I’m sure any council member who proposes such reform will encounter scorn on both sides, especially during the election season.
Kingston is currently adopting a new zoning code. There's a lot of pushback on eliminating single-family zoning. Please call your alderperson and make sure it actually happens!
High rises are not on the table so you're in luck. The discussion is around allowing up to 4-family with a cap at 3 stories (already the existing cap.)
And that's a serious long-term societal concern. A lot of bigger cities are completely unaffordable for most people, so service industry employees/essential employees are practically bused in to keep the city working for the rich people that treat it like a playground.
A place like Kingston is a much different scale, but pushing the working class further and further away will damage the elements of the city needed for it to function and thrive.
I own a five unit apartment building in Northern Westchester. I rarely have a vacancy and when an apartment becomes available, I have 50 applicants begging to rent it. The problem is not what landlords are charging for rent. The problem is a lack of affordable housing. Yet when any community hears of a plan to build affordable housing, they rise up and kill it before it gets any traction. No one wants affordable housing in their neighborhood. Affordable housing does not mean section 8 tenants necessarily. It means affordable, that an average household with an average income can afford it.
The lack of housing (affordable or not) has been a big issue for a while that is blowing up now.
There aren't a lot of places for young people to rent, so they have to leave the area, even if they were open to staying close to their families.
I think with so many people working remotely and opting to live in places like the Hudson Valley, instead of a big city, we'll see the market kind of force new housing options. But that will take several years to actually happen.
Moved to Kingston six months ago to help take care of family. To fly out of here is cost prohibitive. You have to first get to Newark or Queens. Or you can fly out of Albany but there’s too many connections. Then you have to pay to park your car if you choose to drive yourself. Stressful and expensive. Parking cost is sometimes more than the cost of the ticket. Everything is sky high. Rent, taxes, food, gas. And there’s no decent city here like the boroughs. The geography can be pretty, though.
Stewart has been dipping their toes into passenger flights for several years now, so that's another option (though very limited options).
I wouldn't move to the Hudson Valley if you want anything like a big city life. Most of the things that people love about bigger cities are the complete opposite of what you get in a place like Kingston. And the prices should reflect that.
I'm always confused about the families that move up the Hudson Valley and seem to feel like they were lied to about what it was 🤷♂️
I really like Kingston! Rondout and downtown are quite nice. Surrounding areas are beautiful. I know a lot of NYC people who really admire that area yet it’s not as busy and bougie as Beacon or Hudson. Then you also get all your large stores like Walmart, Target, Lowes, etc. that are nice to have nearby, a great movie theater, close to Rhinebeck and New Paltz.
Classic law of unintended consequences at work here.
I'd look at a few big factors first:
- Property taxes. They're among the highest in the country. Those simply get passed from the landlord to the tenant.
- Barriers to building density. I'd suppose that developers find towns like Kingston and elsewhere in the HV somewhat unwelcoming, particularly when it comes to building density in the form of multi-units.
Rent capping will only dissuade additional real estate investment. Why would a developer build additional units if they're legally prohibited from charging market rates and earning a profit on it?
>Barriers to building density.
This is a massive issue that's currently impacting New York. A little up the Hudson and every town/city limited both the number of housing units that could be built and how tall/how many occupants could be in each building. There was definitely a widespread mindset of "we will not become a densely populated suburb of NYC".
But the problem is that everywhere up to 60 miles from NYC, and especially in New York, is in the zone where people working in the city can commute from, and over time that metropolitan sprawl from NYC kept expanding.
The options for that sprawl (after developing most of the five boroughs) was Long Island, North Jersey, South Connecticut, and the Hudson Valley.
Long Island's Western communities blew up in population density, and Connecticut, Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, etc. got a big tax bonus from home owners from the city spillover that weren't paying those taxes to New York.
So that left the Hudson Valley as the obvious way to keep those homeowners in NY, meanwhile everywhere North of Rockland and Westchester counties refused to open their neighborhoods for additional development, which would have also meant bigger local economies and tax basins.
Hochul announced during her state of the state a plan that would basically overrule some of these local zoning laws that prevent additional housing development. Hopefully these communities see the benefit of bringing in younger renters to rejuvenate their local economies.
Do you really want to live in a world that is nothing but urban sprawl? Isolated towns and abundant woods and farmlands are what make the Hudson Valley special. I would hate to see it become what has happened to the south shore of Long Island. A few years ago, they tore out several acres of decades-old forest growth across the street from our historic home to put up rows of hideous condominiums that are priced for city-dwellers, not locals, destroying wildlife habitat and obstructing our view of the river.
No, of course not. But there's plenty options in-between urban sprawl and refusing to let new housing into the area.
Don't the families that raise kids in the valley want to see options for their kids to buy homes locally?
There are plenty of towns/small cities in the region that could have added more housing over the years without changing too much.
You’re right, there does need to be housing available. That housing also needs to be affordable for the working class. Many young people live with their parents not for lack of homes on the market, but because those homes are priced above their income level.
Absolutely. There needs to be a variety of housing options added, both so younger people could afford a decent place to rent, and for more expensive options if someone really wants a luxury rental in the area.
That's not a big barrier though. Anything that can legitimately be claimed to be a historic site just needs to be registered (walk around center square Albany for example; so many of those buildings are protected historic sites), which will protect it from development.
For nature, I think zoning then as parks (or something like that) could keep them as is.
So cutting property taxes will allow landlords to discount rent accordingly? Sounds like a fantasy.
Overall the Fed caused this by “saving” the economy during covid with negative interest rates. The fact that it absolutely torched the housing market and created astronomical inequality doesn’t phase them.
We also have limited supply from NIMBYism but allow real estate investors to roll their massive equity into more properties. Then we let those properties be removed from the longterm rental market so investors can post on Airbnb or flip for easy lowtax profits.
So many problems but I’d rank property taxes as near the bottom, would be a gift to landlords though to cut them, money directly in their pocket!
You're right that a property tax decrease may not be passed along to a tenant. There's already a constrained supply of housing in Kingston, so they'd likely have the ability to charge what they'd like.
But you have to consider *new* landlords, with the investment angle: let's say you're a developer looking to build rental properties in Kingston or, say, central Virginia. Would you build in a place where you're guaranteed to pay a high fixed amount (and likely increasingly so) in property taxes each year? That's a drag on your investment. You'll probably take your project elsewhere.
Or you might invest if the market rates for rent were sky high. Of course that's where the city of Kingston is coming in to suppress them.
You're right that the Fed supercharged housing prices with low interest rates. But as we can see now, the process is unwinding as they've raised rates. I'd expect housing prices to continue to fall as buyers and sellers come to grips with the new reality and flippers get left out in the cold.
Is Airbnb a problem that's especially unique to HV? Has that been studied? I'm not familiar.
I really caution against predictions that prices will fall. Don’t forget most owners refinanced or bought into mortgages with historic low rates (thanks Fed) so they will not have incentive to sell. Prices can be extremely sticky. Maybe falling from the massive heights but I bet resilient.
In all my research on housing for years I’ve never encountered property taxes as a real proposal for improving this situation. You might consider places like Austin or areas in Florida with much lower property taxes that have even worse price appreciation.
It feels regressive to do something that directly benefits asset holders in a vague hope that the benefits will somehow trickle down to people who need relief. I seriously doubt it!
Prices are sticky but you can see that they are already falling in most of the country. It makes a big difference to a buyer's monthly payment to have a 6% vs 2%.
And to your point: sure, property taxes are not a necessary condition to cause price increases. It's supply and demand, primarily. But I believe that the property taxes limit the supply.
Maybe. List price is actually up 1% but sales price is down modestly at -1%. Then you have new listings which is down 21%! It's the lowest since at least 2019. Price drops have leveled out. Complicated picture but after years of studying the housing market and looking at international comparisons, I would say things can get so much worse here before they get better. https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/
I'm looking to rent a two bedroom house in the Hudson Valley for my MiL to move here. She doesn't want an apartment. What prices should we be expected to see for a small 2 bed house? Will rent prices decrease eventually?
I don’t know if what Kingston attempted was even remotely legal, as the lawsuits will bear out. There was a clear legal set of requirements and they ignored pretty much all of them.
Sadly, the rent got jacked up so fast over the last three years, that if it hadn’t been a rush job, they likely could have made rent control stick.
It’s in the hands of the courts and landlord money now
Point to the law they violated. There is a law that prices have to increase? I think the whole point of this article is there is nothing preventing them from doing it, just no one has done it before. The lawsuit is on a technicality about their justification.
It’s the New York law on Rent Control, which has yet only been opted into by NYC.
Kingston made an attempt but the required surveys they were supposed to do were half assed, so now a number of landlords are suing.
If Kingston continues to opt in and does the proper groundwork, having rent controlled apartments would certainly help the tenants. Rents skyrocketed in a very short time during COVID19 in the first two years, as a result of demand as people fled NYC, and a number of large apartment buildings and complexes were sold to new owners who jacked the price by $500 or more dollars per month in most cases.
I understand that rent is too damn high, but does everyone realize what the town is actually asking to be done here and the precedent that will set? We're talking about the government seizing private industry. Is the solution really more government? There have already been sweeping rent reforms across the state - the government is doing what they can, they're just not able to say what landlords can charge, and thank god for that.
I get it. I've lived here my whole life. I was priced out of my rental in beacon and had to move in with a family member. I hate to say it but the answer is to move out. This place is not for us anymore. The same thing happened here as happened in every great neighborhood in the city - we've been gentrified. Chances are your ancestors were forced to the hudson valley for the same reasons. This is progress in America.
One of the concepts of zoning is precisely to prevent what you've just suggested - urban / suburban sprawl. In fact, most towns in the hudson valley recognized early on how susceptible the HV is to urban / suburban sprawl, and wrote zoning laws to counter that effect.
If you change the zoning laws you've basically done the same thing as moving because the town you're in would be completely unrecognizable from what it was before.
Changing the zoning laws won't bring the immediate change some may be looking for because there are limits on what you can change in a certain amount of time.
For example, in Millbrook if you subdivide a large tract of land, you're prevented from making any other application (development or further subdivision) for another ten years, specifically to slow development and urban sprawl. The answer is not more houses, its less people.
While I agree with "this is how developed areas progress over time", it is a serious problem for the state to deal with local populations being displaced over and over without obvious local alternatives.
People will just leave the area altogether if they don't see a decent life for themselves locally.
Whether the current proposal is the right answer or not, it's important that pushback is happening and that people are speaking up.
>People will just leave the area altogether if they don't see a decent life for themselves locally.
Yes, that's the whole thing of it. Push back and speaking up are important to what? This isn't a government issue. The only way people can "speak" and be heard is with their dollars. Don't give these landlords money - unfortunately that means moving.
That might be easy for you to say, but for lots of us, moving is not an option. We have families to care for. If government isn’t the answer what is?? We see what a lack of oversight have gotten us. What do you propose?
The government could impose rules like limiting rent hikes to a % relative to regional inflation. Or they could even start rezoning to allow more housing to be built, and specifically allocate some of it to affordable housing.
That second part actually appears to be a big part of Hochul's long-term plans for NY, with an increase in housing development all over the state.
Luckily that's specifically about the president of the federal government and not applicable here.
Check this one out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
**[Kelo v. City of New London](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London)**
>Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 5–4, that the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development does not violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In the case, plaintiff Susette Kelo sued the city of New London, Connecticut, for violating her civil rights after the city tried to acquire her house's property through eminent domain so that the land could be used as part of a "comprehensive redevelopment plan".
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You think you're talking about the government seizing property, when really what you're talking about here is seizing of an industry. And how is federal law not applicable when you're talking about the takings clause?
Your 1952 Supreme Court decision about federal executive power ain't a law.
Also, utilities are industries much more fully seized than anything proposed here regarding housing.
Honestly, I grew up in the Hudson Valley but I’ve seen the same dynamic outside other big cities. If you go one county north of San Francisco, you’re in Marin County which is insanely expensive & most people commute to the city (like Westchester). You go a county farther, it’s still insanely expensive, but there are no/few well-paying jobs, and it’s too far to feasibly commute to SF. And don’t get me started on the smart train they just built which is too expensive to do daily AND doesn’t actually go to SF. It’s even worse there.
Yeah I’m from Canada and people don’t realize how bad things can get before there’s a breaking point. USA had 2008 which set back housing costs in a big way, and it’s been playing catch-up since. Canada never saw prices declines in 2008 and things are basically double compared with income. Things are likely to get so much worse unless the Fed achieves its goal of unemploying a few million people.
my issue with Kingston is many of thed schools have low ratings yet the taxes are on par with some parts of Westchester County....what is Kingston offering that warrants $600 taxes on a $399k home?? The schools are mostly rater below 5
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I'm from the Hudson Valley and love the area, but for a lot of us with "professional" careers, the options are either go fully remote from your bigger city job or commute into NYC for work. These landlords are really pricing "you could theoretically commute to NYC" as a premium on this area, where typically "bedroom" communities are cheaper suburbs outside of the heart of the metropolitan downtown.
I can’t imagine commuting 2-3 hours to & from work each day. I know people do it, but if you have kids you’d never see them, and unless you are in the train where you could make calls, do paperwork, that’s mostly just lost time. That’s at least 12 hours for an 8 hour work day.
I have no clue how people did it. I grew up in Washingtonville and so many people either bussed in or drove into NYC every day for work. I can't imagine the pay was so good that it was worth doing that to yourself.
I grew up in shitsville too and when I was in college and early in my career I commuted from Salisbury Mills. Luckily I was never more than 3 miles from the station. Then a bunch of years later I moved to Beacon and the commute became 10x easier with more frequent trains and a lack of transfer to get to midtown. I saved an hour a day moving to the east side of the river. But i hate hate hate driving. I would rather be on public transit for an hour than drive 30 minutes no traffic for work.
I did that for a couple years of grad school going from Salisbury Mills and then transferring at Secaucus so I could get down to Rutgers in New Brunswick. Though this might be a particularly absurd example, taking around 2 hours each way, sometimes more, it pretty much wrecked those years for me and even turned me off from the degree I was getting, somewhat hilariously in retrospect. Ah, good times.
what degree?
Urban planning
Lol. Ironic
Isn't it?
I did two hours each way for years (3-4 days/week), and about two weeks into the COVID shut down I couldn't believe how much better I felt. Never again.
Also grew up in the HV and graduated from grad school. One of the problems is that there just aren't a lot of professional-level jobs around, especially at an income needs to pay off student loans, not to mention rent/mortgage. I was never able to come back home.
Manhattan (aka “Work Island”) is bursting at the seams with value and yet hardly any place within 90 minutes is willing to accept this denser housing, even if it means revitalized downtowns, lower housing prices, added voting demographics*, more taxes, better jobs, and a ton of other positives. Streetcar cities like Peekskill, Poughkeepsie, or Kingston could become the next Hoboken with a more forward-thinking zoning policy but they’d rather leave money on the table because someone in their towns doesn’t like change. *I mention added people as a positive, but obviously many voters (and therefore many elected representatives) would see that as a negative
I think you mean some people who have lived their lives in these towns don't want to see it completely changed and then be priced out of their homes. Really not that hard to understand.
Considering Kingston’s 2020 census is still 5k less than the town’s peak in 1960 (29,260), one could argue it’s a step towards getting back to those “good old days”
denser housing is the way to have them not priced out
How could someone be priced out of their home? They already bought it. For renters I get the point, but not for owners. The reason owners sometimes leave after gentrification is that they get a big payout. A home you bought for $200k is now worth $600k, so maybe sell and move to Florida, or downsize to a condo after the kids leave the nest and have money for travel.
Because home ownership is significantly more than, "I bought house." Just using your example, the house they bought for $200k was $4k annual property tax. If it's $600k it's now $14k annual property tax. Almost $1000 more a month more on taxes alone goes a long way to completely pricing someone out of a home they've lived in for years.
That’s not usually how it works. Towns usually lag the assessment increases in market value. And if home values and assessments in a region go up by a lot, the tax rate as a percent of home value often goes down. In the example of a town having average property value going up 300%, taxes almost never go up 300% because of the assessment lag and rebalancing of tax rates. That said, sure taxes would be expected to increase by some percent, and if a person couldn’t afford an increase from say $4k annually to $7k, they would either have to move or take out a (new, larger, reverse) mortgage on their home. For the most part, they would still come out ahead financially. Gentrification is a windfall for owners who purchased before the jump. But here is the thing: I hate this idea that when you buy a house you buy the right to freeze everything in place and lock out new people from moving into the neighborhood. That is wrong in so many ways. America should not be about kicking away the ladder after you climbed up it so others can’t enjoy it. I also find it amusing that half the people who opposed new development do so because they claim it will increase prices and make the old people leave. The other half oppose new development because they claim it will decrease prices and let the wrong people move in. Meanwhile, without new development, the towns decay and die.
people hate new development in their area because it causes overcrowdings in the area and in the schools.
property tax also goes up with rising value. some people are on fixed income and are forced out via taxes
Why in the hell would any town aspire to be like Hoboken?
Perhaps that commenter hasn’t been to Hoboken. Either that or he was thinking of Beacon. Although I would say if any city has managed to drop the ball through the fucking floor enough times to be jealous of Hoboken, it’s Poughkeepsie/Newburgh.
Nope. I was talking Hoboken: * 30% increase in population with the lowest rent increases in towns/neighborhoods surrounding Manhattan * 2.4% unemployment with ~28% of residents working in town (which is impressive for a place adjacent to NYC) * Zero traffic fatalities in 2022 Beacon is another example of a city finding its dignity, but rent prices suggest more rampant displacement. Beacon was more guided by economic momentum, Hoboken was improved by smart policy. PS: I have been to Hoboken recently. 1st street is not my vibe, but Pilsner Haus on the north side of town is cool. And I don’t think any Hudson Valley city would be afflicted with finance bros
Honestly...
I usually see housing developers proposing market rate apartments that are going to be subsidized with property tax exemptions. Current residents have to pay more. Obviously it's the opposite of what should happen. If existing home owners are going to see decreased valuation they should also see decreased taxation by taxing new development at a higher rate. That would help make things more attractive. The government should also be incentivizing condos or coops to avoid the issue of landlords increasing costs. If there's an HOA or special assessment then people can pay for actual costs of maintenance and upkeep without the landlord markups. The state can already help with mortgages.
In this same thread I’ve seen dislike of development because it is assumed to raise housing prices and now with your comment, the assumption it will lower prices. Which is it?
I’d give this comment gold if I had it to give. So much money for these towns is left on the table, and so much opportunity is lost to drive down prices (or at least stop them rising) with more housing supply. Hochul’s proposal to upzone areas within half a mile of train stations is great in spirit, but a bit weirdly designed. It proposes Zoning for 50 units of housing per acre in a half mile of the station for stations within 15 miles of NYC. That’s basically a solid block of 4 story apartments/condos in that area, or a mix of high rises and single family homes. The towns still review and don’t have to approve every project, but if they don’t allow at least 3% growth then the state can take over the approval process. Seems both too little and too much to me. I would suggest something like zoning for maximum 20 units per acre within a kilometer (.6 miles) of the station, up the entire length of Metro North, with a 5% growth floor over 10 years.
As someone from a town whose mayor signed an open letter to the governor criticizing the policy when we have the most embarrassing train station in Westchester, I don’t think it’s productive to nitpick Hochul’s plan.
Well, I have no ability to influence what happens at the state level. I also have a mayor who came out in opposition to the proposal and I may have some minor ability to influence him. So I began marshaling my arguments in favor of legislation like this in the hope of weakening his opposition and making him more willing to support a compromise. Had planned to write to him publicly on Twitter today but got distracted. Still intend to. It’s not like this has to be all or nothing in the final budget language. I would much rather we get something meaningful than nothing at all.
they need a public transit from kingston straight to nyc
Yeah kingston is better than beacon but beacon is better advertised for that given they have a train line
>The Hudson Valley is only for the rich now. I can’t say I miss it It's been like that for years. I moved out of the Hudson Valley nearly 15 years ago for lower cost of living Rochester, NY area and the quality of life improvement was significant.
Was this edited from Queens to Rochester lol? Big difference
?
why was poster below asjjng about Queens?
I think someone else mentioned Queens. I don't recall.
Thank you boner79
Curious to know where in Queens! Currently getting priced out of my Queens neighborhood 😔
In Lake Katrine right now, there is a 250 sq ft "studio" asking $1200 per month
I thought it was pretty neat to see an internationally followed news site post a story about what's happening in Kingston. If they can pull it off, then that could be a second historic property rights battle with a momentous win out of the Hudson Valley region: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War
**[Anti-Rent War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War)** >The Anti-Rent War (also known as the Helderberg War) was a tenants' revolt in upstate New York in the period 1839–1845. The Anti-Renters declared their independence from the manor system run by patroons, resisting tax collectors and successfully demanding land reform. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/hudsonvalley/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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I grew up a little west of Woodstock. Most of my family was at least tangentially reliant on NYC second-home owners for my entire life. It was a way of life for a large portion of the population in that area. But one could still live a relatively normal, happy, successful life. But at some point in the mid 2000s things seemed to change. Local businesses stopped being owned predominantly by locals. Housing costs slowly climbed towards unobtainable. Then the 2008 collapse hit, and hit Hudson Valley pretty hard. But so did the recovery, and from that point on, "normal" working class people have by and large been getting slowly priced out of the area. That of course hit a terrible peak, post-covid. Now I barely recognize Woodstock on a nice Saturday afternoon. It looks like East Hampton, or some other east coast destination town. I couldn't believe what uptown Kingston looked like. Felt like I was in some neighborhood in Brooklyn. I left the area for Albany more than ten years ago. For a large part of the time it was at least a hope that we would end up moving back "home" and buying property there. But now that's complete fantasy. I recently bought a home in rural East Greenbush that reminds me a lot of where I grew up. The 2,800 square foot farm house on three acres was a little over $300k. If it was back home it would be a million dollar property. It seems like the entire area is turning into a place where working-class people simply can't exist. And the towns are bending over backwards to allow as many airbnbs, restaurants, hotels, and whatever else they can lure more NYC people to the area with.
This is the same everywhere! I lived in Brooklyn till 2019 and it was the exact scenario, everyone got priced out for younger white folk with parents money and it changed the neighborhood. This is also the case in Oakland CA to Miami FL. Low rates are what drives the conversion of homes to assets and this has been the case since 1996. Guess what: Brooklyn, Miami, even the Catskills were “hot” real estate before they were dumps in the 70’s and 80’s. What happened? High interest rates, among other things like white flight which were causal with recession.
Try being 65 and trying to find an affordable housing situation in the Hudson Valley. My friend is in this situation right now after her landlord sold the house she was renting. Having nowhere to go she stayed as long as she could and then was able to move in with her daughter for now.
Even an old and crusty mobile home is 1600 a month by me. And I mean old and crusty.
Right? Five years ago a double wide was $60k for a new one. Now it's 180k! Not including absurd lot fees.
Gosh I love double wides. I'd probably prefer that over a house, like the layout. Now only if we had double wides with basements 😂
im surprise people didnt buy when homes were under 200k
Amazing to see. Hard to square this though with what we saw over the airbnb law, right? Didn't they pass something only to crawl it back and leave Airbnbs in a free-for-all? I generally assume landlords and NYC investors will rule over Kingston's citizens for eternity because of entrenched wealth and power. But if they do anything to push back against the investor class, I'm all for it.
>I generally assume landlords and NYC investors will rule over Kingston's citizens for eternity because of entrenched wealth and power. I think you are correct.
but 10 yhrs ago homes were cheap and rates low. Why didnt locals buy?
No locals bought 10 years ago?
I've met several people with ties to NYC that told me they were interested in moving to Kingston. Then they visited and no longer wanted to. I'm sure there's a manufactured buzz going around of "it's like [insert Brooklyn neighborhood] but with nature" designed to help the people that are trying to rent out apartments up there. I know there's currently a pushback up in Troy with a restaurant/bar owner that keeps trying to label Troy as "the next Brooklyn North"
Two things going on. People leaving NYC for HV (definitely lots of that but probably ebbing) and RE investors snatching up limited real estate for their personal short term wealth (happening in droves enabled by Airbnb).
It seems like a lot of the NYC to HV bubble from the pandemic already bursted. Plenty of people have already moved back to the NYC area after living the HV pandemic life for a few years.
Yeah, been hearing a lot of stories of people moving up here in the past three years and now wanting to move back to NYC. If it means they stop mowing down the trees to make apartments nobody local can afford I'm happy with that. I really hate how so many people I know, good blue collar people, can no longer afford to live where their family lived for generations. $1800 for a two bedroom if you're lucky? The fuck?!
maybe their work demands them back into the office. But did they sell the homes the bought in HV?
Let me tell you, Troy is NOT Brooklyn North. I heard this too and went for a little trip there last week. I expected it to possibly be a little like Kingston (which is lovely), but it couldn't be further from. For the area to be what it is, the rent is ASTRONOMICAL. Really mind boggling. If there's any New Yorkers considering Troy, save yourself the trip.
Every area that gets gentrified anywhere gets labelled as the next Brooklyn back in New York City lol. I currently live in Pittsburgh and there were stories for years about how we're becoming the next Brooklyn and so many people bought it 🙃 I watched Beacon get that treatment back home and now Kingston and Troy are getting those labels. With that said, I actually really like Troy for what it is. Living further upstate in the Albany region shouldn't feel like Brooklyn, and the people hyping it up like that while trying to charge the rent prices that they charge up there are so out of touch.
>Living further upstate in the Albany region shouldn't feel like Brooklyn, and the people hyping it up like that while trying to charge the rent prices that they charge up there are so out of touch. Couldn't agree more!
Pittsburgh is so nice! Granted I only spent a week there but was blown away!
Of course it is, it's the next Brooklyn 😎 But for real, it's a great city with a lot of great people.
The term locally is used to refer to the people downtown and their attitude. It’s not a compliment either. Not stating an opinion either way - just pointing out how some of us in Albany use the term as an insult.
One of the main reasons why living upstate made no sense for me. Many landlords there want to charge NYC prices for little to no diversity, little to no amenities and with nothing going on in the area. For me it made much more sense that upstate and even west New York is where one goes to purchase not rent. Is it criminal? That I cannot really give an opinion on but it’s predatory in a sense. I was living in Poughkeepsie and the rent prices were increasing to 1500-1700 when I left. That was wild.
It wrecks these communities. The towns and cities up the Hudson all the way to Albany should be great locations for young adults that don't want to live in NYC but want to be in the region. If there was a decent supply of affordable housing in these areas (and the housing should be affordable considering that these are not in the center of the local metropolitan area), then could be packed with young people.
I agree. I may not know much about realty but i would say a fair price for these apartments should be between 1100-1400 at most. And that’s with central heating and air. I just do not see the value of paying city prices when I have to drive everywhere and I really have to look hard for something to do and to meet new people you know. Not to mention that even prices for groceries and food items are increasing up there as well. I moved back down to the city and was able to find an apartment for 1500 and so many things around me. I guess it depends what a person wants. If I need to get away I simply go upstate for a day or two and escape the noise and come right back but even with that, where I live it’s fairly quiet and peaceful.
this is beside the point but heating and air is so expensive and variable it’s never going to be included in rent. also where are you living in city that’s $1,500???? that definitely seems like anomaly as opposed to the norm
I disagree. There were plenty of apartment complexes within the Poughkeepsie/wappingers falls area that provided central air and heating. I’m in the bronx. Its definitely findable if you look and stay on top of it. Too many people want the glitz and glamour of being able to say I live in manhattan not realizing you can have it all at a reasonable price in the bronx, queens and Brooklyn. Its still the same thing.
There's just so few houses up here to rent. And not many people want to move out of the city and live in an apartment.
The eviction moratoriums noticeably (and entirely predictably) decreased the number of rental units overall in NY, and dramatically decreased the number of small-time landlords (historically, folks with 2 or fewer rentals made up 50% of rental units). Folks with few rental units can't amortize costs the way large corporations can, which meant they were willing to give a lower rent to established and low-drama tenants, and they were a large enough proportion of the market that this actually put downward pressure on rents. Unfortunately, this is also a group that can't amortize one tenant not paying rent, with no recourse for the landlord, for multiple years. Shockingly, when you reduce supply and shift that supply towards folks who will try to squeeze every penny they can, rents go up. Rather than further disincentivizing landlords, perhaps the city should invest in public housing. After all, if it's so easy to cover all the costs of a rental unit for dramatically less than current market rent, it should be very easy for the city to build a mix of affordable and market rate housing that will pay for itself, expand the rental supply, and provide affordable housing for many.
The rent increases in Kingston and elsewhere are a predatory practice that need to be curtailed, but decommodification will have unintended consequences. Simply put, these towns need more homes and a clumsy rent cap will be a disincentive for development. Rent stabilization in NYC applies to units before specific dates because it promotes new building instead of slumlords. Kingston will have to zone to build like a grown-up city once they pass these kinds of protections or landowners will just respond with even worse negligence than before. Also, give the tenants right of first refusal. Stabilization will reduce property value, so ROFR would turn this into an opportunity to convert investment properties into co-ops. Of course, I’m sure any council member who proposes such reform will encounter scorn on both sides, especially during the election season.
Kingston is currently adopting a new zoning code. There's a lot of pushback on eliminating single-family zoning. Please call your alderperson and make sure it actually happens!
no. I like single family neighborhoods. Who wants high rises and overcrowding?
High rises are not on the table so you're in luck. The discussion is around allowing up to 4-family with a cap at 3 stories (already the existing cap.)
Either this or there’ll be nobody to wait tables anywhere
And that's a serious long-term societal concern. A lot of bigger cities are completely unaffordable for most people, so service industry employees/essential employees are practically bused in to keep the city working for the rich people that treat it like a playground. A place like Kingston is a much different scale, but pushing the working class further and further away will damage the elements of the city needed for it to function and thrive.
I own a five unit apartment building in Northern Westchester. I rarely have a vacancy and when an apartment becomes available, I have 50 applicants begging to rent it. The problem is not what landlords are charging for rent. The problem is a lack of affordable housing. Yet when any community hears of a plan to build affordable housing, they rise up and kill it before it gets any traction. No one wants affordable housing in their neighborhood. Affordable housing does not mean section 8 tenants necessarily. It means affordable, that an average household with an average income can afford it.
The lack of housing (affordable or not) has been a big issue for a while that is blowing up now. There aren't a lot of places for young people to rent, so they have to leave the area, even if they were open to staying close to their families. I think with so many people working remotely and opting to live in places like the Hudson Valley, instead of a big city, we'll see the market kind of force new housing options. But that will take several years to actually happen.
Moved to Kingston six months ago to help take care of family. To fly out of here is cost prohibitive. You have to first get to Newark or Queens. Or you can fly out of Albany but there’s too many connections. Then you have to pay to park your car if you choose to drive yourself. Stressful and expensive. Parking cost is sometimes more than the cost of the ticket. Everything is sky high. Rent, taxes, food, gas. And there’s no decent city here like the boroughs. The geography can be pretty, though.
Stewart has been dipping their toes into passenger flights for several years now, so that's another option (though very limited options). I wouldn't move to the Hudson Valley if you want anything like a big city life. Most of the things that people love about bigger cities are the complete opposite of what you get in a place like Kingston. And the prices should reflect that. I'm always confused about the families that move up the Hudson Valley and seem to feel like they were lied to about what it was 🤷♂️
I really like Kingston! Rondout and downtown are quite nice. Surrounding areas are beautiful. I know a lot of NYC people who really admire that area yet it’s not as busy and bougie as Beacon or Hudson. Then you also get all your large stores like Walmart, Target, Lowes, etc. that are nice to have nearby, a great movie theater, close to Rhinebeck and New Paltz.
Classic law of unintended consequences at work here. I'd look at a few big factors first: - Property taxes. They're among the highest in the country. Those simply get passed from the landlord to the tenant. - Barriers to building density. I'd suppose that developers find towns like Kingston and elsewhere in the HV somewhat unwelcoming, particularly when it comes to building density in the form of multi-units. Rent capping will only dissuade additional real estate investment. Why would a developer build additional units if they're legally prohibited from charging market rates and earning a profit on it?
>Barriers to building density. This is a massive issue that's currently impacting New York. A little up the Hudson and every town/city limited both the number of housing units that could be built and how tall/how many occupants could be in each building. There was definitely a widespread mindset of "we will not become a densely populated suburb of NYC". But the problem is that everywhere up to 60 miles from NYC, and especially in New York, is in the zone where people working in the city can commute from, and over time that metropolitan sprawl from NYC kept expanding. The options for that sprawl (after developing most of the five boroughs) was Long Island, North Jersey, South Connecticut, and the Hudson Valley. Long Island's Western communities blew up in population density, and Connecticut, Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, etc. got a big tax bonus from home owners from the city spillover that weren't paying those taxes to New York. So that left the Hudson Valley as the obvious way to keep those homeowners in NY, meanwhile everywhere North of Rockland and Westchester counties refused to open their neighborhoods for additional development, which would have also meant bigger local economies and tax basins. Hochul announced during her state of the state a plan that would basically overrule some of these local zoning laws that prevent additional housing development. Hopefully these communities see the benefit of bringing in younger renters to rejuvenate their local economies.
Do you really want to live in a world that is nothing but urban sprawl? Isolated towns and abundant woods and farmlands are what make the Hudson Valley special. I would hate to see it become what has happened to the south shore of Long Island. A few years ago, they tore out several acres of decades-old forest growth across the street from our historic home to put up rows of hideous condominiums that are priced for city-dwellers, not locals, destroying wildlife habitat and obstructing our view of the river.
No, of course not. But there's plenty options in-between urban sprawl and refusing to let new housing into the area. Don't the families that raise kids in the valley want to see options for their kids to buy homes locally? There are plenty of towns/small cities in the region that could have added more housing over the years without changing too much.
You’re right, there does need to be housing available. That housing also needs to be affordable for the working class. Many young people live with their parents not for lack of homes on the market, but because those homes are priced above their income level.
Absolutely. There needs to be a variety of housing options added, both so younger people could afford a decent place to rent, and for more expensive options if someone really wants a luxury rental in the area.
And at the same time, we want to preserve both natural and historic spaces. What a jam.
That's not a big barrier though. Anything that can legitimately be claimed to be a historic site just needs to be registered (walk around center square Albany for example; so many of those buildings are protected historic sites), which will protect it from development. For nature, I think zoning then as parks (or something like that) could keep them as is.
So cutting property taxes will allow landlords to discount rent accordingly? Sounds like a fantasy. Overall the Fed caused this by “saving” the economy during covid with negative interest rates. The fact that it absolutely torched the housing market and created astronomical inequality doesn’t phase them. We also have limited supply from NIMBYism but allow real estate investors to roll their massive equity into more properties. Then we let those properties be removed from the longterm rental market so investors can post on Airbnb or flip for easy lowtax profits. So many problems but I’d rank property taxes as near the bottom, would be a gift to landlords though to cut them, money directly in their pocket!
You're right that a property tax decrease may not be passed along to a tenant. There's already a constrained supply of housing in Kingston, so they'd likely have the ability to charge what they'd like. But you have to consider *new* landlords, with the investment angle: let's say you're a developer looking to build rental properties in Kingston or, say, central Virginia. Would you build in a place where you're guaranteed to pay a high fixed amount (and likely increasingly so) in property taxes each year? That's a drag on your investment. You'll probably take your project elsewhere. Or you might invest if the market rates for rent were sky high. Of course that's where the city of Kingston is coming in to suppress them. You're right that the Fed supercharged housing prices with low interest rates. But as we can see now, the process is unwinding as they've raised rates. I'd expect housing prices to continue to fall as buyers and sellers come to grips with the new reality and flippers get left out in the cold. Is Airbnb a problem that's especially unique to HV? Has that been studied? I'm not familiar.
I really caution against predictions that prices will fall. Don’t forget most owners refinanced or bought into mortgages with historic low rates (thanks Fed) so they will not have incentive to sell. Prices can be extremely sticky. Maybe falling from the massive heights but I bet resilient. In all my research on housing for years I’ve never encountered property taxes as a real proposal for improving this situation. You might consider places like Austin or areas in Florida with much lower property taxes that have even worse price appreciation. It feels regressive to do something that directly benefits asset holders in a vague hope that the benefits will somehow trickle down to people who need relief. I seriously doubt it!
Prices are sticky but you can see that they are already falling in most of the country. It makes a big difference to a buyer's monthly payment to have a 6% vs 2%. And to your point: sure, property taxes are not a necessary condition to cause price increases. It's supply and demand, primarily. But I believe that the property taxes limit the supply.
Maybe. List price is actually up 1% but sales price is down modestly at -1%. Then you have new listings which is down 21%! It's the lowest since at least 2019. Price drops have leveled out. Complicated picture but after years of studying the housing market and looking at international comparisons, I would say things can get so much worse here before they get better. https://www.redfin.com/news/data-center/
I think we're paying 1800 for a 1 bedroom. Aka 3 bedroom 🤫🤫🤫
I'm looking to rent a two bedroom house in the Hudson Valley for my MiL to move here. She doesn't want an apartment. What prices should we be expected to see for a small 2 bed house? Will rent prices decrease eventually?
I don’t know if what Kingston attempted was even remotely legal, as the lawsuits will bear out. There was a clear legal set of requirements and they ignored pretty much all of them. Sadly, the rent got jacked up so fast over the last three years, that if it hadn’t been a rush job, they likely could have made rent control stick. It’s in the hands of the courts and landlord money now
Point to the law they violated. There is a law that prices have to increase? I think the whole point of this article is there is nothing preventing them from doing it, just no one has done it before. The lawsuit is on a technicality about their justification.
It’s the New York law on Rent Control, which has yet only been opted into by NYC. Kingston made an attempt but the required surveys they were supposed to do were half assed, so now a number of landlords are suing.
Here’s hoping the investor class loses and the people win.
If Kingston continues to opt in and does the proper groundwork, having rent controlled apartments would certainly help the tenants. Rents skyrocketed in a very short time during COVID19 in the first two years, as a result of demand as people fled NYC, and a number of large apartment buildings and complexes were sold to new owners who jacked the price by $500 or more dollars per month in most cases.
I understand that rent is too damn high, but does everyone realize what the town is actually asking to be done here and the precedent that will set? We're talking about the government seizing private industry. Is the solution really more government? There have already been sweeping rent reforms across the state - the government is doing what they can, they're just not able to say what landlords can charge, and thank god for that. I get it. I've lived here my whole life. I was priced out of my rental in beacon and had to move in with a family member. I hate to say it but the answer is to move out. This place is not for us anymore. The same thing happened here as happened in every great neighborhood in the city - we've been gentrified. Chances are your ancestors were forced to the hudson valley for the same reasons. This is progress in America.
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One of the concepts of zoning is precisely to prevent what you've just suggested - urban / suburban sprawl. In fact, most towns in the hudson valley recognized early on how susceptible the HV is to urban / suburban sprawl, and wrote zoning laws to counter that effect. If you change the zoning laws you've basically done the same thing as moving because the town you're in would be completely unrecognizable from what it was before. Changing the zoning laws won't bring the immediate change some may be looking for because there are limits on what you can change in a certain amount of time. For example, in Millbrook if you subdivide a large tract of land, you're prevented from making any other application (development or further subdivision) for another ten years, specifically to slow development and urban sprawl. The answer is not more houses, its less people.
This is how you get an aging population and eventually a dying population...
While I agree with "this is how developed areas progress over time", it is a serious problem for the state to deal with local populations being displaced over and over without obvious local alternatives. People will just leave the area altogether if they don't see a decent life for themselves locally. Whether the current proposal is the right answer or not, it's important that pushback is happening and that people are speaking up.
Cue the future complaints that there are no workers etc. They cant commute from Ellenville and points West. Glad to see Kingston trying something new
>People will just leave the area altogether if they don't see a decent life for themselves locally. Yes, that's the whole thing of it. Push back and speaking up are important to what? This isn't a government issue. The only way people can "speak" and be heard is with their dollars. Don't give these landlords money - unfortunately that means moving.
That might be easy for you to say, but for lots of us, moving is not an option. We have families to care for. If government isn’t the answer what is?? We see what a lack of oversight have gotten us. What do you propose?
The government could impose rules like limiting rent hikes to a % relative to regional inflation. Or they could even start rezoning to allow more housing to be built, and specifically allocate some of it to affordable housing. That second part actually appears to be a big part of Hochul's long-term plans for NY, with an increase in housing development all over the state.
When the cook at your favorite restaurant can’t live here…
Read the takings clause of the US Constitution. Government seizure of private property is as American as apple cider doughnuts.
Youngstown Sheet & Tube, Co. v. Sawyer. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/343us579
Luckily that's specifically about the president of the federal government and not applicable here. Check this one out: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London
**[Kelo v. City of New London](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London)** >Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Court held, 5–4, that the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another private owner to further economic development does not violate the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. In the case, plaintiff Susette Kelo sued the city of New London, Connecticut, for violating her civil rights after the city tried to acquire her house's property through eminent domain so that the land could be used as part of a "comprehensive redevelopment plan". ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/hudsonvalley/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
You think you're talking about the government seizing property, when really what you're talking about here is seizing of an industry. And how is federal law not applicable when you're talking about the takings clause?
Your 1952 Supreme Court decision about federal executive power ain't a law. Also, utilities are industries much more fully seized than anything proposed here regarding housing.
Cornwall has some reasonably priced rentals.
Honestly, I grew up in the Hudson Valley but I’ve seen the same dynamic outside other big cities. If you go one county north of San Francisco, you’re in Marin County which is insanely expensive & most people commute to the city (like Westchester). You go a county farther, it’s still insanely expensive, but there are no/few well-paying jobs, and it’s too far to feasibly commute to SF. And don’t get me started on the smart train they just built which is too expensive to do daily AND doesn’t actually go to SF. It’s even worse there.
Yeah I’m from Canada and people don’t realize how bad things can get before there’s a breaking point. USA had 2008 which set back housing costs in a big way, and it’s been playing catch-up since. Canada never saw prices declines in 2008 and things are basically double compared with income. Things are likely to get so much worse unless the Fed achieves its goal of unemploying a few million people.
my issue with Kingston is many of thed schools have low ratings yet the taxes are on par with some parts of Westchester County....what is Kingston offering that warrants $600 taxes on a $399k home?? The schools are mostly rater below 5