This was in the Times Union a few weeks ago. I’m not surprised but am disappointed that this article didn’t bring up zoning at all.
https://www.timesunion.com/capitol/article/capital-region-legislators-concerned-housing-18594529.php
It’s not like it’s a non sequitur either. Hochul tried to get a prohibition on single family zoning into the budget last year.
This seems another example of where journalism fails to inform the reader, rather than merely reporting what people say without context, background, or asking more probing questions.
(Was the journalist around for last year’s budget?)
There were a lot of quotes but few facts provided to assess whether the approaches favored by each have any grounding in the real world. Some of the suggestions by politicians quotes in the article:
- Increased tax exemptions for seniors (no mention of what would be cut, or whose taxes would be increased to do that)
- Incentivizing local governments to enhance affordable housing (whatever that means)
- A statewide registry of short-term housing rentals (there is now discussion about whether those should be taxed at the same rate as hotels, which I think has some merit, though I doubt it will do much to help the affordability of housing: we have plenty of mostly empty hotels around here as well)
- Allowing mobile home owners the right to meet a bid made on the property their mobile home is located on (this one might actually help, though without the way to carve up lots into small enough chunks, I can’t imagine it would make a huge difference. Presumably the seller would already be willing to accept such an offer if it could be made)
StrongTowns has a number of good pieces on ways to increase the amount of affordable housing. This piece provides a good starting point.
I would love to see local journalists start pushing back harder on politicians who offer generic statements, particularly when those statements don’t seem to address the issues at hand. Part of what the news media does is set the agenda for public discussion and conversation. They can pretend they just report on what others say and do, but by choosing who they talk to, what questions they ask, what quotes they decide to print, and even how they decide to frame a story, they make editorial decisions that shift public understanding of an issue. We should expect them to do so in ways that enhance our understanding of the challenges we face as a community, not that simply cloud the issue with snippets from politicians.