By Tim Rowland
To help deal with an estimated 7,500 housing units needed in much of the greater Adirondack region, multiple agencies, municipalities, nonprofits and even private homeowners themselves are working on it:
- Essex and Franklin counties have created land banks, and one is in the works in Clinton County. Land banks fix up dilapidated homes acquired through nonpayment of taxes and sell them to people of limited means, using the proceeds to tackle the next project in the pipeline.
- Local governments are also becoming directly involved in housing projects, using pools of funding from grants or land sales to develop small communities of workforce housing, like this example in Hamilton County and this one in Wilmington. These projects are small, but potentially impactful in concert with other solutions.
- Nonprofits such as the Adirondack Foundation, Northern Forest Center, Adirondack North Country Association and Homestead Development Corp. of Lake Placid are assisting with affordable housing projects that range from small apartment buildings to modest developments to cooperative communities set up by homebuyers themselves. These developments are generally larger than municipal projects, and are funded with a combination of grants, gifts and lines of credit from local banks.
Read the full article in the Adirondack Explorer.