By DEBORAH E. LANS
HUDSON–The housing crisis is not improving. Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress President Adam Bosch summed up the situation by noting that the American Dream of “Homeownership right now is mathematically out of reach for the majority of our neighbors who do not already own a home.”
In January, Pattern issued “Housing in the City of Hudson,” a study commissioned by the Columbia Economic Opportunity Corporation (CEDC), and in February Pattern issued its “Annual and Q4 Data Hudson Valley Regional Housing Market.” The reports underscore that the various forces that have put housing – both owned and rented – out of reach for so many have continued for a variety of reasons.
According to Pattern’s regional survey, in 2024 the median sales price of homes in Columbia County was $475,000, an increase of $25,000 over 2023 and of $217,500 since 2019. In 2024, the number of homes for sale increased about 10% over 2023, so that more inventory was available to home buyers, a positive sign especially as inventory declined between 2019 and 2024 by 48.5%.
Mr. Bosch identified a number of reasons for the continued shortage of affordable homes in the county. First, the trend, begun during the pandemic, of northward migration of people buying homes at 105-110% of asking prices has continued, buoyed by both the trend of remote working and the growing number of corporations buying single family homes for investment. Second, the region is producing little new housing for ownership; most of the development is for rentals. With supply depressed, prices continue to rise. The cost of producing new housing – be it of land, materials, labor, or insurance – is continuing to rise substantially. Finally, because interest rates continue to be relatively high, people are staying in their homes. For example, seniors who might wish to downsize are not selling because staying is their best financial option.
Pattern also found that there are few hopeful signs. Although there has been a slight increase in inventory, it is still 55% below pre-pandemic times.
One final point derived from the 2024 survey, Mr. Bosch notes, is that because home ownership has become so far out of reach for so many, there is “a greater proportion of middle-class families seeking out rentals than ever before, putting stress on an already-limited rental stock.”
Pattern’s extensive analysis of the Hudson market reached similar conclusions. Federal standards say that if a household pays 30% of its income for housing costs it is “cost-burdened.” If housing costs exceed 50% of household income, the family is “severely cost burdened.” In other words, a healthy budget should allocate no more than 30% of the family’s income to housing.
Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) statistics for 2017-2021 (the most recent available) show that in Hudson there are 1,565 renting households and 885 families owning their homes. Nearly 40% of all renters were severely cost-burdened and another 11% were cost-burdened. Among homeowners, one third were paying more than 30% of their income for housing.
In the past decade Hudson has seen growing income disparities between its low-income and high-income families. The former saw wages increase by 13% over that decade (adjusted for inflation); the latter saw a 105% increase. In turn, the nature of the housing stock in Hudson has changed. More affluent buyers have been purchasing properties, often shifting them from multiple- to single-unit dwellings, pulling them out of the rental market for use instead as second homes or short-term rentals. The result has been tenant and workforce displacement.
The City of Hudson has made a significant effort to change the trajectory of development. While only 33 additional housing units were produced in the past decade, efforts by the administration and other circumstances now see proposals pending for the construction of 420 housing units throughout Hudson, of which more than half will be affordable to those earning 50% of the county’s Area Median Income (AMI, another HUD statistic used both to define housing affordability and to qualify development for funding).
In 2024 the county AMI, which varies by family size, was $86,184 for a two-person family, $96,760 for a family of three and $106,400 for a family of four. Almost three-quarters of all Hudson households consist of only one or two persons. Notably, the median incomes in Hudson are lower than the county-wide figures. That means that housing intended to be affordable for, say, a family earning 50% of the county AMI may still be unaffordable for that same-sized family in Hudson.
Finally, the Pattern report details the gap between wages and housing costs in Hudson. Only two categories of employment – professional and technical services and finance and insurance (accounting for 236 jobs in 2021) – earned more than 100% of the AMI for a two-person household. Some 2,166 jobs (mainly in healthcare and social assistance) earned at 80% of AMI, and more than 830 workers, in the arts, recreation, accommodations, food services and, ironically, real estate and rental and leasing, earn less than 50% of the two-family AMI.
Most of the new housing is still in the pipeline, at various stages of the municipal approval process or, in the case of the Hudson Housing Authority projects, still in the planning phase. The exceptions are Galvan’s Depot District I project, at 708 State Street, which will have 12 units at 80% of AMI and 51 units at 130% of AMI and which is now under construction, and its 501 Union Street project which, with 11 market rate units, is already complete.
Against this landscape, countywide housing efforts also continue to gain steam, as most recently profiled in this paper’s February 13 issue (“Columbia County is front and center in Governor’s Pro-Housing County agenda”), January 29 issue (“County Housing Task Force meets”) and January 18, 2025 issue (“Housing News: A first, grants and more”).
To contact reporter Deborah Lans, email deborahlans@icloud.com.
