Grant may help issue of housing

May 01, 2008 07:10 am

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We've been hearing talk for years now about the lack of various kinds of housing in Otsego County, especially in the Oneonta area. With market forces at work, solutions have been hard to define, let alone institute.

Perhaps the $25,000 state grant announced last week for the county will allow planners to attack the issue head-on.

The funding, from the Division of Housing and Community Renewal, will help the county conduct a housing needs assessment to help local government and private-sector partners address the housing shortage.

In Otsego County, the problem of finding affordable shelter is daunting because rents are kept high by demand from students and tourists, said Chairwoman of Otsego County's Human Services Committee Rep. Kathy Clark, R-Otego, earlier this year.

It is well-known that with two colleges in Oneonta, students occupy many of the city's rental units. And the county's booming youth baseball camps draw thousands of tourists, many of whom rent houses by the week during the summer.

We have heard tales from single mothers who have been forced to move their children into less-than-desirable mobile-home parks because they couldn't afford to rent an apartment in Oneonta.

Daniel Maskin, Opportunities For Otsego executive director, said last week that when ``you take the combination of increased housing costs and increased fuel costs and increased food costs _ the only thing that's not going up is wages. We have some real concerns about affordable housing for low-income families."

A shortage of housing that low- and middle-income families can afford is only part of the problem, however. Employers and economic developers have been saying that a lack of more-expensive housing is also an issue that must be addressed.

The grant will enable the county to study all aspects of housing and will not just focus on affordable housing for low-income and working families, senior planner Karen Sullivan of the Otsego County Planning Department said last week.

Rob Robinson, Otsego County Chamber president and chief executive officer, said a gap in the supply of higher-quality housing makes it more difficult to attract business and industry.

If a company that would employ 100 people in the middle- and higher-income ranges were to look at Otsego County, it may opt to pass, he said.

Even firms already in the area have complained that attracting management and professional staff is a challenge because of a lack of available high-end housing.

We don't have a history of necessarily believing that taxpayer-funded studies do much good by achieving positive results. However, we hope this grant can point us in the right direction to a solution because of the documented and specific nature of the problem.