Low and Moderate Income Housing Development Task Force

Monday, January 27, 2025 - 11:00 am

Jim Monty - Chairman

Supervisor Hughes called this task force to order at 11:00 am with the following in attendance: Clayton Barber, Ken Hughes, Mike Mascarenes, Matt Stanley, Favor Smith, Carol Calabrese, Megan Murphy, Terri Morse, and Angie Allen. Charlie Harrington, Anna Reynolds, Krissy Leerkes, Bill Tansey, Nicole Justice-Green, Alan Jones and Mike Diskin were absent. Jim Monty and Joe Pete Wilson had been previously excused.

Also present: - Dina Garvey, Jim Dougan, Caitlyn Wargo - Adirondack Roots

News Media Present - none

HUGHES: Good morning, everyone, we’ll call the Housing Task Force to order. Jim, asked me to step in and kind of organize our efforts today. It’s been a couple of months since we’ve convened. So, Happy New Year and so I am glad we’re all able to be here, and I wanted to take the opportunity, I had asked Jim, back in November if I could do this the next time we convened, which was to take a few minutes of the Task Force’s time to talk about where we’re going, what we’re doing and how we’re going to get there when it comes to housing, housing affordability, supportive housing, and the general theme of housing is still in crisis, not only in the North Country, but throughout New York State and across the Country. We’re grateful, I’m grateful, I think we are all grateful that we have the silver bullet of the Essex County Land Bank to address certain aspects of housing that were falling through the cracks and that was a terrific initiative that was between non-profits, this Board, the State and we’re off and running, for better, for worse, as we continue to learn to be more effective with vacant properties, land bank acquisition, and the improvement of those properties to get qualified individuals into those homes and so for me, it’s always been a thought about, what’s next? What are we doing next? What is the next biggest, what is the next great thing? What’s the next silver bullet? What are we going to be doing as a Task Force? And so, last August I received a notification about a vacant, reclaiming vacant properties conference in St. Louis and I think Jim had put it out to the Supervisors and for me, it was a lightning bolt, because it was like, maybe there’s an answer for what’s next for this Task Force or for Essex County. So, grateful to the Chairman and grateful to the taxpayers that sent me to St. Louis for this 3-day conference. And it was for me, a transformational conference. I know all of us have been to a conference before, in some way, shape or form, but to say a conference was transformational, is a pretty big word and I wanted to, because it was such a unique experience. I did go out by myself, so I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I provided for you a document that summarizes, the events, the workshops that I went to at the conference and I would like to take the opportunity, today, to talk about the conference and share with you what I learned at the conference in hoping that it may spark some ideas for you, but I also want to make sure that after I am done talking about my experience at the conference, that I know that there are some other people in the room who have some ideas about housing and where we might be able to go, because it’s the first meeting of the new year, I think it might be a great opportunity for us to set the agency for what we might look at doing in 2025 when it comes to housing and I know Mike has some ideas and I have talked to Terri, a little bit about some of your ideas and I am sure that there are other people in the room that have ideas. So, if you’re indulge me to take about 5-10 minutes, I would like to just go through the topics of the sheet in front of you and answer any questions that you may have.

So, this was put on my the Center for Community Progress. It took place at the Hyatt in St. Louis. It was an incredible experience and the organization, the President, her name is Nicole Hannah Jones and really the conversation, the theme of her opening of her opening remarks was, How can we ensure that residents who are marginalized by disinvestment play a central role in shaping the solution to community revitalization. So, the people that are effected most by the social challenges when it comes to housing, how do we get them involved to help be a part of the solution and I wanted to provide and I’m not going to read, obviously, every single aspect of this, but I wanted to provide some history for, when you go to a national conference, like this, you really get national perspectives and it’s a different perspective and it’s a different perspective than the Adirondacks. So, the national perspective is that brown and black families and brown and black people have been incredible marginalized for the course of decades. I don’t know about any of you, but my grandmother, that has since passed, was born in 1912. My parents, who are both alive, were both born in 1950 and I was born in 1976. So, the issues that are referenced in this picture in the front, relate to President Truman and President Truman, who was President from 1946-1950, late ‘40s into early ‘50s, they were having housing issues back then. I am reading this book about the years of Lyndon Johnston and it’s talking about in 1949, more than 10 million American families are still living in houses and apartments that didn’t meet, even the lowest standards for decent housing. We have those issues, today, across the Country. Now, what was great about the workshop, was that I was trying to identify, how does the Adirondacks, how does the North Country population fit into this? We don’t have a lot of brown and black families, but we do have a lot of people who are living below poverty level, we do have a lot of people that are living in the lower social-economic status of the economical world. So, a lot of the issues that started in the 1940s have continued and have been exasperated, because of the system; right? The larger system and so on Page Two, they talked about how the 1934 Fair Housing Act created the Fair Housing Administration and the 1944 GI Bill was created post WWII and these are direct screenshots from Wikipedia that I pulled in and they talk about both of these being not fair, because they were, they did not, if you were black and brown, you were not allowed to participate. There was incredible segregation, just black and brown people couldn’t take advantage of what the Federal Government was offering. So, even back in and I bring up those timelines of my grandmother and my parents, this is just a couple of generations away from us, it’s not like it’s something that happened a 100 or 200 years ago, but these were issues that we’re dealing with today, that are just generational offshoots of what happened when our parents and our grandparents were still alive. So, our grandparents, not our grandparents, because we’re white, but if you were not white, back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, you were marginalized and that talks about the generational wealth, that talks about the generational opportunities that may families throughout the Country are experiencing, today, as children and grandchildren of those populations and so we’re dealing with a system, today, even in the Adirondacks, mostly we are white, but even in the Adirondacks, we have poorer people, who are part of that generational lack of wealth that they have not been able to build that generational wealth. I was very impressed and interested, not impressed, that is the wrong word, but I was very interested by what is happening in St. Louis. There is a street called, Delmar Avenue and if you live on one side of Delmar Avenue, you have everything you want and if you live south of Delmar Avenue, you have nothing. If you live on one side of Delmar Avenue, you have the resources to pay for private security forces, to make sure that people from the other side of Delmar Avenue, don’t come into your property, that still exists, today. Now, this is intercity, this is a major national city where there are major racial issues. I don’t believe we have those major racial issues in the North Country, but we still have racial issues. We also have, I think the biggest issue is social-economic issues and so these are the things that we have to think about when we’re thinking about what are the aspects of housing that we wish to tackle to try and prove and mitigate the housing crisis that does exist in the North Country.

I had a chance to attend a couple of different, really great workshops, on Page Three, the first workshop that I attended was an update of Tyler V. Hennepin, where I had the chance to sit in the room, as close as I’m sitting to Mike, to the lead attorney for Hennepin County, had front row to that conversation, by that attorney. If you scan that QR Code, it will bring you to an audio, I audio recorded what that entire workshop was about, maybe 40 minutes. So, there were individuals there from Minnesota, from Massachusetts, and from New York, that were all talking about how Tyler V. Hennepin was affecting them, both in Minnesota, both in Massachusetts, and actually a representative from the Greater Syracuse Land Bank, who was the Land Bank that really worked with us to inform our efforts here. So, you know, if you have a couple of minutes to listen to that, you’re going to hear the direct voices of these individuals, especially the Hennepin attorney, which I found very, very, very interesting when it came to the legal aspects of that law.

Another workshop that I attended was, How Land Banks Can Practice Intentional, Authentic Community Engagement. Discussing generational wealth for families instead of developer wealth. I think that’s an issue that we need to think about here, it’s very easy for us to say, a developer is going to get involved. Well, that’s great and I respect that, but we also need to think about how does a developer being involved affect those that are marginalized. Are those marginalized individuals who have been kicked out of homes, or haven’t been able to pay their taxes, whatever the situation that they find themselves in, how can we make sure their needs and their basic rights are being meet, those developers are looking to build wealth for themselves, by building a complex. I was really taken aback by the idea that they’re really focusing on prioritizing residents. One might think that Land Banks may not prioritize residents, they may prioritize profits, or they may prioritize the business aspect of things, but I think it’s really important to just remember who we are working for, especially the elected officials in the room, we are working for our constituents.

Page Four; the workshop #3. This was really important, because it was talking about non-governmental legal programs to reduce vacancy and promote equitable development. So, the State of Missouri has an Abandoned Housing Act, we were just talking about this in the backroom. You know what do we do with blighted homes? Are blighted homes the area that we might take a focus on for 2025? What do we do with, if you have a blighted piece of property, okay, you teardown the property, we talked about that, maybe it has asbestos, you have to deal with that. Who pays for that? Does the County ever make its money back on that property? So, again, this is a State issue, but I think it’s important for us to think about what the State may or may not be doing when it comes to housing. I know Governor Hochul has proposed and is proposing housing opportunities for 2024, now 2025 and so these are maybe some things that we need to think about when it comes to, how do we want to advocate for laws and bills at the State level. Again, these are all just broad brush issues. If you have a moment where you’re not doing anything, take a peek at this.

Another workshop that I attended was Community-Informed Demolition and Developing a Prioritize Algorithm from Resident Input. So, they talked about Flint, Michigan; which used to be a city of 200,000, now it’s only a city of 80,000.00. There’s a lot of blight in that city, a lot of blight, whole blocks full of just blighted properties and every town in Essex County has blight in it, every single one. I attend this, because I felt it might inform us on how we can handle blight, but through a process of standardization, instead of just opinion. So, I share that with you.

MORSE: What does “ Children as a Species” mean?

HUGHES: Oh, I love this. I highlighted in red, because this was a lightbulb moment for me.

MORSE: Okay

HUGHES: Children as a Species indicator means that children in a community identify how healthy that community is. So, if you have a lot of kids in your community, that is a species indicator to suggest that it’s a healthy community. When you have children in your community, what do you have? Schools, stores, places for those families to live and shop, those are places that families can afford to live. You have playgrounds, you have all of the things that kids and families need to survive, because those kids are there. If you have a community that doesn’t have a lot of children, one may argue that families can’t afford to live there. There’s not enough stores that attracts families to there, there’s not enough school population for them to consider even schooling their children there. So, that’s what it means by Children as a Species Indicator.

MORSE: Thank you

HUGHES: I attended another workshop; How Local Government Can Help Address Heirs’ Properties. This was a new term for me. I had not heard this word before, but essentially it means that you have a property that has been off the tax roll and has been vacant for a long time, well, the grandmother lived there, just couldn’t pay her taxes, well, she died and the kids of that grandmother or the grandkids, they live somewhere else in the Country or maybe somewhere else in the world and they have no desire or interest or even knowledge of what to do with that property. It’s just out of their eyesight. This was an opportunity to learn how to help those families; either deal with the bureaucracy of finding the deed, finding the information, paying the back taxes, or working with local community leaders and organizations to clear the land and get it to an organization that can actually do something with it, but I had not heard of Heir’s Property, before, so I thought I would share that with you.

And Workshop 6; Using Eminent Domain as an Equitable Development Tool? We all know about eminent domain and so in Georgia, they have a special purpose, local optional sales tax or SPLOST, which was a voter approved sales tax and they’re using some of that money to help offset costs for maintenance and expenses, but instead of going through the eminent domain route where local government was just taking control, this was an opportunity to maybe not be so heavy handed in that process by the local government and finding ways to avoid that before it actually went to eminent domain.

On the backside here, I just want to provide, these are pictures of St. Louis, the top picture was 1932 and the bottom picture was much later, same area. So, at some point, the Federal Government came in and said we’re taking control of this entire area and we are demolishing all of these properties. This is where the St. Louis Arch is on the Mississippi River and so the in the top picture, thousands and thousands and thousands of people live there, those are their homes, those are their bakeries and delis and groceries and places to eat food and places to worship and everything that we do in our communities and then at some point, the Federal Government, said, and you can reference it by the bridge in the bottom right hand corner, of the 1939 picture and you can see it in the upper right hand corner of the bottom picture. This is where this conference took place and if you’ve ever been to the St. Louis Arch area, it’s a big, great big open space, but tens of thousands of people used to live there and they were all displaced and this actually just happened again, on the last page, recently this area, between Jefferson Ave., St. Louis Ave., and Cass Ave., this was a location in St. Louis, homes, businesses, worship, schools and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which is the agency that supports combat troops, where they fly the drones from and where the Federal Government does a lot of their, again, national geospatial intelligence work, they just totally razed this entire area and they destroyed it and a lot of people were displaced and I can promise you that it wasn’t white, affluent people who were displaced in this area. It was mostly black and brown families who were displaced. The amount of discord that exists in St. Louis, today, is incredible, absolutely incredible and that shook me for a loop. I am a white male and white men have owned property forever and white men have always made the rules. That was the jest that I got at this conference. Even white women are not generally, historically, credited with making the rules. We still have the argument, it’s not even an argument, it’s a fact that women, do not make the same amount as men do and that is because of the system that has been created over time. It’s a deep rabbit hole to get into, but I wanted to share all of this with you. I wanted to take the time to put all of this together, it was an incredibly valuable conference for me. It was different than going to NYSAC or AOT or NACo, this was really focused on reclaiming vacant properties and finding ways to help solve the housing crisis, but it was, I don’t think we ever talked about why we have a housing crisis in the first place and I believe there are offshoots and tentacles of the general theme of the conversation that took place that we dealing with and I wanted to make sure that we can talk about the solutions, but I think it’s also important for us to understand that the problems have been and the problems that we’re experiencing are not just problems that have existed in the North Country or New York State, these are systemic problems, nationally and they have found their way, over time, into New York State and into the North Country in their own North Country, New York State way and so us as elected officials, us as leaders of our organizations, we have to understand the past in order to make smart decisions for the future. So, I hope this helps you understand what I attended for those few days. I enjoyed putting it together and am happy to answer any questions about it. I am done bloviating. I wanted to at least put this out there.

If there are other ideas, I know, Jim Monty, had some ideas about things that we can take a look at, I am happy to share those, as well. I know Mike, had some ideas and if there’s anybody else in the room who has ideas about maybe the direction that we should go this year, I think now is the time to try and chart that course.

STANLEY: So, what I just got out of this presentation from you, and correct me, if I’m wrong is, nothing has changed, this is not a new problem and it’s not going to be easy to fit, because look at the time from the 30s to now. The problem still exists, so how do we, it’s not a one problem fix all, it’s what tools can we get in our toolbox to start looking and slowly start to remediate some of these problems.

HUGHES: It’s a great question and I was listening to NPR this morning, talking about the new Trump Administration and we have the Governor with her, with the budget process where it is and we have us; right? Three layers of government, and the Trump Administration is just getting their feet wet on what they’re going to be doing and they’re issuing a ton of executive orders, right now, to figure out how they want to answer their campaign promises. The Governor is now working with the legislature to figure out how they’re going to build a budget for an April 1^st deadline. What I heard on the radio was that is it’s really going to be coming down to towns and counties to find creative solutions that work for those towns and work for those counties. We should not be waiting for anything from on high, we should not waiting for any dictums from the Federal or State Government, they’re going to be doing their thing for however fast or slow that they’re going to want to do their thing, but for us, I think we need to get creative, we need to be bold, we need identity a problem and then we need to try and figure out how we’re going to put the resources, what resources, whether they’re county resources, whether they’re grant resources, whether they’re non-profit resources, whether they’re a combination of all, anyone of those three or more, to solve our problems, locally and to do the best we can with that.

STANLEY: And I think if we can focus on our communities and our county and start to figure out ways that we can take blight and turn it into a positive thing and it’s using the tools we have. It’s using the town, the land bank, the county, trying to understand the properties that have taxes that are owned and how to deal with those. How to deal with the remediation of this blight and how do you take a house that’s falling in and remove it at a cost that’s not exorbitant and I think that the Land Bank, has some tools that we’re trying to work through with grant money and I know Adirondack Roots, has things that they can do to help put a structure back on those properties and just looking around the room, there’s a lot of organizations that can help do that. How do we start to get each one from acquisition of property, to remediation of the blight to a new family? In Jay, we’re extremely lucky to have seen a house that was on the foreclosure list, the amount of money and time it took to go into that house, and now the result is we have a young family living in a house and being a part of our community. Now how we replicate in different types of ways, but make it affordable to our taxpayers to be able to do that and I think once we start to get a formula going and find a way to replicate that, I think we can do it and see it throughout the County and once we have that blueprint, how do we get the word out to let other towns and counties understand how to do this, because it’s not going to be the same for here in the Adirondacks, as for somebody out near Rochester or Syracuse or down in the Hudson Valley. All these things are different, but how can we take and manage our way, how we can look at other people who are doing things and replicate those things, so we’re not all reinventing the wheel?

HUGHES: Agreed, thank you.

MORSE: Hear, hear

HUGHES: Yeah, it’s really great.

MORSE: So, Ken, I also struggle with the, how do we recognize our minority populations in Essex County? And every time I have to fill something out for the Office of Mental Health, I’m like 3%, you know, it’s very low. The way I have always thought about our diversity, or the minority populations in our county are the low income and/or working poor. What United Way calls the ALICE Population. The last, I tried to look up the most recent ALICE Report, but the last time I looked at it, I think it was the 2017 report and Essex County had 12% poverty rate, but a 30% ALICE rate, that’s 1 of every 3 people are living from paycheck to paycheck and I think we see that play itself out when it comes to housing issues. As the Director of Mental Health, I think I’ve received 3 phone calls from people who are getting evicted in the last three months of 2024 and I have no place to suggest to put them. There wasn’t any organization that had available housing for them and that is a deficient in Essex County is a very big way. So, a lot of them are going to other counties, unfortunately and as Angie often brings to my attention, that some of the available housing or available, I don’t want to call it housing.

ALLEN: Temporary housing.

MORSE: Temporary housing, gets in some ways chewed up by Clinton County coming to Essex County, As, I’ve talked to you, several times, both you and Mike and Jim, is that just what, exactly what you were saying, as we’ve got to come together and make sure that we are collaborating, so that we’re not leaving gaps and that we’re not duplicating efforts and to me the Housing Task Force is the groundwork of bringing those individuals and those organizations to the table to try to discover what could be done in our county, or beloved county. And you’re absolutely right and I remember, Mr. Gillilland, saying, probably 2-3 years ago, it was all I could do to not stand up out of my chair and just applaud and clap, because he said, he was comparing Essex County to Vermont and how Vermont comes together as a State and supports one another and they have this, sort of statewide Vermont First, etc., and he said, you know, I would like to think that Essex County could be, could come together in the same way that Vermont does and I was like, if any County can do it, Essex County can do it.

HUGHES: Of course, thank you.

MURPHY: Thank you so much, that was a great presentation. Just curious if they had any specific sort of sessions or something on rural areas? Because I think when you talk about vacant and blighted properties, there’s a lot of difference and one thing I would bring up is, in our cases, property available. So, I was just curious if there was any discussion around the difference between blight in urban areas and rural areas and also if there were examples of places that maybe we could look to, to say, what are they doing and what are programs that have worked in other areas?

HUGHES: That was the one letdown of the conference. Is that it was mostly attended by suburban and urban organizations, representatives and the like. There were rural there, but mostly examples were suburban and urban examples. I went there with on question, I went there with one main question, specifically for me in Essex. I have a bunch of blighted properties, but people still keep paying their taxes on that blighted property and my question that I really wasn’t answered was, what do you do when you have a blighted property and the family’s owners keep paying their taxes on it, you know what do you do? You know, it’s still there. So, two answers to that question, I want to take a look at what the National Housing Task Force that NACo had, that I was part of, I am wondering if they have examples about, and that’s on the NACo website, as well, they’re final report, but I would like to take another look at that and I can also go back and take a look through my brochure, here and see if there is anything specific, but I did leave that conference with less than stellar feelings about, everything else was great, but I just didn’t have the silver bullet answer to and I think maybe the silver bullet answer, which still needs some refining is, I can ask my Town Board, if they would approve of me writing a letter to the owner of that property who has, it’s been vacant and blighted for 10-15 years and saying, how can we help you? What kind of assistance do you need? Because I want to help you realize your success in that house and if they write back and say, we don’t want it anymore or whatever, then maybe I can talk to them about taking possession of that, I don’t know where I’m going to get that money from or if it’s a gift and then it gets transferred to an organization. I would like to try and keep people in their homes, if possible.

MURPHY: Yeah and you can actually, I mean you can certainly use us as a resource.

HUGHES: Absolutely

MURPHY: If they have a need for rehabilitation and don’t the ability. They would have to be primary residents, thought.

HUGHES: That’s where the hard part is.

MURPHY: That is where we run into a lot of issues, but you know now. And then I think we have a complicated issue as a rural area, it’s like some, but it’s a smaller group, because I run into it from the State side and I actually just talked to the assessor in one of our towns where we have some of these properties. The difference we have from a lot of other rural areas is that our land is worth money. It’s a very big difference, you know, we’re a Neighbor Works Organization and we talk to organizations across the Country and the difference between us and other rural areas is that, they’re what they’re called land rich. You know, they have lots of land, you know and they have the same complications that we have, as a rural area, you have low incomes, but the difference for us is that extra added cost to developing in our communities, because the land itself is actually quite valuable, which is maybe why they’re kind of hanging on to that property. You know, because if they let it go for tax sale, that’s probably not the best, it’s a good financial option for them to be able to sell it and do something and then we can, you know, I think it’s talking about how do we, we’re starting to develop with the Keene Housing, a list of buyers. So, then if they would be interested in selling, maybe that’s an option is to put it into a trust and sell to someone, rehab it and then sell it to someone at a, affordable price.

STANLEY: So, to answer your question, maybe I have some questions to ask you to help answer those questions and think about them out loud; 1, are those blighted properties, do they have code issues?

HUGHES: Possibly

STANLEY: If there’s code issues, possibly the code enforcement could help start to move that process along, to either fix it up, demolish it. The other thing, as you were talking about that, they don’t know what to do, immediately brought me back to Workshop #%, Heir’s property.

HUGHES: Yeah

STANLEY: Like you said, these people might not know what to do with their property, so if you sent them a letter or maybe it’s something that one of our organizations looks at. Maybe you have a list of properties, whether the Land Bank, whether it’s Adirondack Roots, reaches out to those homeowners and says, what is your intention with the property? You have it, do you what to do with it? Here are some options of how you could actually make money with it or helps somebody else out with it. Because, I mean there’s the vacant rental assistance money, there’s blighted property, like to house needs to be torn down. Maybe some people just want to know, if I can unload this and give it to an organization, maybe it’s going to save me money in the long run and I’m actually willing to do that, I just don’t know how to do that.

HUGHES: Right, it’s funny, I do a lot of work at the County level for housing, but in Essex, personally, I don’t do a lot of housing, because I’m still stuck. People pay their taxes and I don’t want government getting in the way, but to your point, maybe they do a little bit of help and that’s where government can be supportive of that process.

STANLEY: I know like, myself, sometimes I might procrastinate a little bit and I’ll deal with that next year, but oh my god, I have another bill I have to pay, I’ll pay it and I’ll worry about it again, next year and then I get that, it’s that whole, free subscription, and then I start paying for it, because I forgot that I go it for free.

HUGHES: Right, do you want to talk about those 4 things that you had brought up?

MASCARENAS: Yeah, I don’t remember the 4 things I had brought up, but what I’m going to say is, I think right now, we need to move in a direction that actually gives us real tasks and real initiatives that moves towards goals and outcomes. We’ve had some really good conversations over the past year, but since we’ve put the Land Bank in place, we’ve largely had just discussions and there’s a real reason for that. When I look around the room, I see a Mental Health Director, I see housing professionals, but the only ones fully dedicated to housing. The rest of us are on 10-12 committees, where we’re pushed in a million different directions. I see Supervisors, a see a Highway Superintendent. You have a population that has a certain amount of need, probably not the biggest need to terms of housing in the County.

MORSE: We need big housing, I need apartments.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, but as a committee what do we focus on ? You have a certain amount of population you represent in your professional world. This time of year, this winter in particular, when it’s been very cold, to where you’ve got to focus on.

MORSE: And workforce housing.

MASCARENAS: Yeah and we all deal with that. Right, so no matter what we deal with, we deal with housing in one way or another that has become a barrier toward growth, but what can we reasonably handle and what can we reasonably get accomplished. The Land Bank was a major accomplishment. I think we do have some tools in place to get that going. Decision making, sustainability there, is going to be the key to their success. We got to understand that once we turn those properties over, we no longer have a say. So, as we think about procedures and protocols and processes and how we might want to hand properties over, we need to understand that we don’t get to make the decisions for them once they have them and also something.

I do think the blight, we need to talk about. We do need to talk about what is happening in those communities with warrants. Many of you may not understand, the Board, certainly does, because they listen to me, a lot. Warrants are paid to every taxing entity by the County. This spring, within the next couple of months, we’re going to cut every taxing entity a check for the amount of unpaid taxes that are due to them. Whether it’s your school systems, your towns, water/sewer districts, all those things. Which is why we are the foreclosure agency, when that time comes and somebody can’t pay their taxes. On top of that, we do have some communities that have taken on some blight properties. They decided, the town removes them on their own and then they charge them back in the warrant the following year. So, what happens to the County when that happens is we may have 3, 4, 5 years of unpaid taxes and now we have an action item that’s added even more to that burden and you’ll never recoup that in terms of an auction sale.

So, I think we can, probably define a process for that, real easy and reasonably, that will assist the towns in getting another tool in their toolbox to try and clean up some of the blight on their own. Some towns are very good at it, some towns don’t touch it.

The social-economic status is what we all use in terms of the service industry. If you’ve been around long enough, you see the names time and time again, they’re the same folks. When you came in and were a caseworker, you’re now seeing the children that you removed from parents and those types of things, because there’s really a cultural aspect to poverty and the inability to get out.

HUGHES: Created, potentially by the system.

MASCARENAS: Yeah, absolutely.

HUGHES: The system.

MASCARENAS: So, in Essex County, that’s what you have. You have really a culture of poverty, that limits people in education. There are those individuals that kind of are able to persevere and get to the other side. I don’t know how, but they’re remarkable and our towns are very diverse. So, I live in Moriah, which is very blue collar. That whole town was built by the private sector. It was built by the mines. So, that infrastructure that still exists, that water and sewer infrastructure for miles, was built my immigrants and by the mining community. Very different than Keene. Very different than Lake Placid. I think we’re in the middle of a paradigm shift right now. I would like to know the difference in those towns. Jay, we’re starting to see that, really start to rear. Wilmington, it’s been going for a long time. North Elba, what do have to earn to live in one of those communities, today? That number, I think it way higher than what we think. I don’t think that’s the working poor, I think we would be like, holy cow. I think the ALICE population. I think higher than the ALICE population could not afford to live in those communities, unless you somehow inherited property throughout the years from somebody else, but if you wanted to move here and buy a property, not happening, not on a wage with the tourist industry that we talk about so often as being the best thing in the world. Well, those jobs that support tourist industry folks, don’t pay enough to even work here. So, that’s where you want to have a diversified economy.

But, I do think we need to focus on a couple of different areas and topics and whether we divide and conquer and bring back information. I think that one area, I know we’ve talked about a property in Jay, specifically just before. I think that’s an easier, low hanging fruit that we could do pretty quickly in terms of coming up with a process where there’s a cost share between towns and counties on some of those demo properties. So, that the county’s not eating the entirety of the bill, but there’s a cost share there.

I do think one of the greatest needs we have is senior housing, not even really assisted living, per se. I mean that’s just a bonus, if you can find that, but what I’ve noticed a lot in our communities is we’re aging, not like any rural America is aging. The fastest growing population in Essex County is 80+. Those people demand service and they should get it. The issue is, a lot of these people are staying in their homes for longer periods of time than they may even want to. They don’t want to figure out how to mow their lawns and plow their driveways and fit things that are broke. They would love to have an option without leaving the every town in which they’ve been in for 50-60 years, where they can have some socialization and some community events that are going on there, but they don’t have that option. I’m not saying we push people out of their homes, that’s not what I’m saying at all, what I am saying is people need options and then that housing stock maybe comes available for young families to move it.

The STRs are continuing to be an issue. That’s where I am talking about the paradigm shift and they’re driving the cost of housing in a lot of these communities and that sprawl is getting wider, it’s rolling down. You’ve seen it in your community more recently. Jay, 10 years ago wasn’t haven’t that issue with assessments getting pushed and those types of things, because Lake Placid’s out grown in, Keene, Jay, Wilmington; right? We’re seeing that in the north. Do we tackle that?

But what are some of the initiatives that we really feel. I think we can make a big difference in a short period of time, should we be tackling as a group and getting answers? Because, I feel like last year we kind of lost track after we got that land bank. We were like, yay, okay and there’s a real reason. The task is daunting, because there’s so many things that play into housing, employment. One thing I thought, you know, should the County try and buy housing? That’s what the private sector is doing. Will that help me in terms of attracting people and getting them to live here? Angie’s had a caseworker that has tried to get a job here, twice. They can’t find a house to buy. So, twice that has become the barrier to them coming to work for us and living here and potentially growing a family.

MORSE: Mike, I think that Ken brought up a really good point in the early part of his presentation is that, I don’t think we have a firm handle on defining the problem.

MASCARENAS: No

MORSE: I mean I wrote down, probably 7 different bullets of the problem; STRs, affordable housing for low income, blighted properties, second homeowners chewing up available housing stock, minimal housing for workers, aging in place housing, but I feel like we need to come together to as a group, create a list of the problems, prioritize the problems and then maybe set up some working groups that work together between our quarterly housing meetings and come back and report on whatever the 3 out of the 8 problems we decided to tackle first.

MASCARENAS: Yeah and I would argue middle income might be the most left out.

MORSE: Right, yeah

MASCARENAS: We have Section 8 Housing, we have some of those in place. Do we meet every need? Hell, no, but what do we have in place for the workforce that works here? What do we have for those para-professionals and professionals that are working at the hospital? We’ve had those meetings, the hospital is like what do we do?

MORSE: Right and the fact that the hospital is having the conversation and they’re at this table is a problem, because let’s say they come up with a solution that’s duplicate to something we’re coming up with and then it’s not efficient.

MASCARENAS: Well, their solution and their problem is mission based, based on attracting employees. Their solution is buy housing, and put employees in it. That’s what we’re seeing happen in North Elba right now. The private sector is buying housing. One guy bought a motel to house people at.

WOOD: I just want to thank you for what you both have said, because I’m here trying to figure out how the Town of Schroon fits into all of this. We’re severely hampered by the amount of actual property that’s available to use for housing and it’s all in private hands and yes, we need decent affordable housing low income and middle income people and definitely need it for older generation. I have people telling me all the time that they would love to get out of their lovely home, but there is no place to go. So. I am trying to figure out where we fit in as a town and I support everything that’s going on here, myself and believe our Full Board, does also, but it’s not exactly geared for our issues. So, I thank you for what you said and you know, I will continue to come to these meetings as I can, but we don’t have the infrastructure and we don’t have the actual property to use for the housing that we need.

STANLEY: So, I think we do sort of know the problem, but I don’t think government is necessarily the answer to all the problems.

HUGHES: Yup

STANLEY: So, let me use workforce housing, so I definitely think that’s a great idea, about we need to help workforce housing, but I think if you have a working group for that, I think you need to have some of the people who employ people, but just the municipality, like the hospital. Whether it is a big, like for me, Ward Lumber Company, or like Northline, like those big companies that hire a lot of people. I mean, I was having this conversation, I think with Mike. AuSable Forks was built, just like Moriah, with, it was all company housing. Well, things may be cyclic and maybe the time we start looking at company housing, again. Whether you’re, I mean you obviously don’t want to owe your soul to the company store, but like the company can operate if there’s people there with housing. I mean this was brought up with Fire Districts and buying housing to house some of their volunteers, but in order to do that, you had to give a certain amount of time to be on call, to be able to even apply for that housing. I think, yes, we can be a conduit to start the conversation. It doesn’t mean we need to do all the work.

MORSE: Exactly, I mean Hamilton County, built 6 tiny homes, to address the workforce issue. I don’t know if they’re owned by the County, or it’s owned by another entity, but they use that for people that are coming to the community, can’t find permanent housing, but they need a place to be temporary, until they can find larger housing.

MASCARENAS: One thing, and this is silly and we don’t know what we don’t know, so a few months back, driving through our county and I start noticing all these solar farmers in our hamlets and I said, we have a big disconnect and we have a big problem. So, we’re of the, these things are great, we get a PILOT; really? You just lost the potential of thousands and thousands of dollars in tax base and the ability to have housing in your community, because when we look at our restrictions and our barriers via the APA and those types of things that we deal with; wow, wow, for what results in a $5,000.00 PILOT. So, we don’t even know what we don’t know and there are a lot of counties that don’t support solar farms in certain areas, there are a lot of them that don’t, but I’ve got one right across the road, now and it’s quite large.

MURPHY: So, I just wanted to throw out one other item to think about for next year. I was talking about this at another meeting, you know as we were rolling out Keene and we were getting applications, one of the things we’re finding and we’re a HUD Certified Housing Counseling Agency and so we counsel both new homebuyers and a repeating homebuyer, too and then people in foreclosure and so one of the things that we did see with a lot of our applications, we got a lot of applications, but a lot of those folks, even if they were making a decent income, they’re not want we would deem mortgage ready. They may have a credit score that’s not going to make it with a mortgage company, they may have a lot of other debt, you know, they look at their debt to income ratio, they look at a number of things and we do see this. We don’t do counseling with folks in rentals, but what we do see is a series of evictions, every year. We get a lot of calls about folks and so one of the things that, if you do want people to be housed and sustainably housed, we need to be thinking about financial capabilities of those individuals, because that’s part of the cycle of moving through what you’re talking about and so and being able, we can build homes, and we may have plenty of people who want the homes and they may even have the income for the homes, but they may not be able to get a mortgage for those homes and so I think that’s something from the needs perspective, that’s one way of thinking about it, but when who can you really house? You know, especially if you have a large debt to income ratio. Some of our rents are really far outside the ability of folks to be able to pay, although, again, they may have the actual income and so, and here you have to have a car, so you have a car payment. You start to add all these things on and suddenly it’s very difficult to actually pay for housing via rental or homeownership. So, we’ve being thinking a lot about that, about how do we get our community members ready to be sustainably housed financially, because we do see quite a lot of this. We have had a surprising number of folks in Essex County that our foreclosure person is working with and she works with folks in other counties. She’s had a lot of success. She’s got a mortgage background in working with the mortgage companies, because, again, I think someone here said it and it’s incredibly important to think about this, keeping someone housed, right now, is incredibly important, because there’s really not somewhere else for them to go and there’s a lot of different circumstance around foreclosure and lots of reasons why people end up in that situation and lots of ways of working with them and the bank to help that family. A lot of times it’s whole families stay housed, so I just think that’s important thing for us to be thinking about, too.

HUGHES: Another layer of the onion.

MURPHY: We can build all you want, possibly, but we may not be able to actually put people into those homes that are local residents and I think that is what we want.

MORSE: And where my head went, when you were talking about that, is how much education do kids get in schools about what, life skills training about what it means to house yourself once you graduate?

MURPHY: And pay all your bills.

MORSE: Exactly

MURPHY: And figure out how much you can afford when you’re making so much.

MORSE: Is that happening? Ken, is that happening?

HUGHES: They do hold classes, but probably not to the, you know, it used to be Home Economics and then it became Family and Consumer Science, Life Skills Course, things like that. So, those do exist, but I can speak, that was 10 years ago, you know, what they’re doing now with programs and budget cuts and thinking like that. I’m not sure what they’re doing.

MASCARENAS: And again, those children that go to college and don’t qualify for financial aid that come out with hundreds and thousands in debt, almost have no choice. So, again, that middle income group is being pinched hard.

STANLEY: Well, it goes back to what do we not know, that we don’t know and like thinking about the financial aspect of homeownership. I think that’s a portion that we as a government can do, is we can work on getting out the word, what services does the County offer, individuals to be able to live and thrive within our county. I threw this out at the whole board, about creating a human services community, at my town, just so I could let them know what services that people can and I am still learning and I’ve been in this job now, for almost 3 ½ years and just want do our residents not know and how do we get that word out, and how do we teach them how to be financial stable to be able to get that mortgage, to be able to afford that home for the workforce. I mean there’s so many things, I like the fact that you hit on the head that we should have subcommittees and I don’t even know what those subcommittees would be, but we just came up with two. I mean financial understanding and workforce housing. I mean, you guys are the smart people, it just triggers things in my head.

MORSE: And there’s an old saying, how can you eat and elephant? One bite at a time. So, that’s how we can work on it.

DOUGAN: You guys are right where the project manager wants to speak up. This has all been a great conversation, but we’re not leaving here with any tasks and so we’re not going to be any farther ahead next month, unless we have some tasks.

MASCARENAS: I wrote down a couple of thoughts early on and a lot of people have touched on them. I almost, I am going to suggest that this group have homework; okay? You’re chairing this meeting, so maybe I shouldn’t, but again, I almost think we should and you like to collect that information and present it in an email, again, to just write down the barriers that we see to affordable housing in Essex County and affordable doesn’t mean just low to moderate, it means across the board. You know, I thought about it, quickly, obviously, we have regulatory, I heard somebody say, APA. That’s a barrier to housing. Short term rentals is a barrier, but those are almost subcategories under supply. And then, you know, I think it was a great step, creating the Land Bank, first; okay? Part of the reason we created that is, because it should be a more affordable way for us to deal with some of those other things. I think we should assess this last project, this first project, although a success in terms of, it’s a home that now is no longer blighted and has people in it. Was it a sustainable process? Was it am affordable, sustainable one? So, I think we just need to list a few tasks like that, that we need to address first. I see somethings that are barriers to affordable housing that might be lower hanging fruit and that’s what this group, I think, should focus on. So, one step at a time, we can get our own list of barriers to you, we can maybe talk about that, next time and then talk about what’s low hanging fruit and at the same time, let’s reassess what has been done at the Land Bank, so far. Mike, made a comment that once it’s with the Land Bank, we don’t get a say anymore.

HUGHES: It’s true, yeah.

DOUGAN: Well, you know…

MASCARENAS: We get a say in whether we want to turn the property over to them and forgive taxes and once they have it, the decision making is kind of in their hands. We do have Board representation on the Land Bank.

HUGHES: That’s an influence on the conversation.

DOUGAN: And so, I just think we and maybe we need to, in this committee, if there’s Board representation on that, make our recommendations when a property does go to the Land Bank, of the kind of things we would like to see them do. I mean, again, I’m not sure, I still think that property’s a success, but I don’t know if it was a sustainable success and so, I am just suggesting a couple of tasks to come back, so we’re a little bit more focused, not so broad in what we’re doing. I’m a project manager, I am the guy that you guys ask to get the stuff done and if I don’t break it down into small parts, then I don’t accomplish much.

HUGHES: You’re right, if we walk out of here with like, okay what are we doing, we just talked and talking’s great, it’s awesome, we’re just kind of throwing things up against the wall, we’re going over stuff, just rehashing things we talked about, but you’re right, if we don’t have a task coming out of here, then what are we doing between now and the next time we meet.

So, we’re at the hour, I would like to respective for everybody’s time, Carol?

CALABRESE: I just have a couple of things, great discussion. It’s really interesting to everybody’s points, which are well taken. But in reference to a couple of comments that came out, you know, Mike, you’re concerned that once we have a Land Bank sale, there’s no more say. Is there an option to lease it for a few years, so that intervention can be part of that? You know, as long as they’re paying their lease or rent with the option to buy at the end, along with that comes this tutorial, assistance that Megan is talking about or any other organization. That’s not holding them forever, but it’s giving them more of a chance, even if they don’t realize, that’s what the goal is to keep counseling and keep an eye on it, so they do stay in place and they can afford that house and they have the skills to do that.

I just want to point out that the blue collar housing, that you pointed out between Moriah, don’t forget Trudeau Institute. That was not blue collar, these are international scientists, top of their field, coming in to do research. So, this doesn’t just on touch on the low to mod or working class, this is across the board. I know that we’ve all have conversations with our health care system, they’re not talking about upper, you know, educated doctors, they’re talking about people coming and working in the labs and on the floor and you know, yes, that is blue collar working, but.

Then we go back to solar farm discussion, front in center, right in the Town of Moriah, you know how do we take property owners who are in hamlets or in APA developable, not forever wild, the next out from the hamlet. How do we take those large property owners, properties that are just sitting there and match them up with either a developer or again, the missing link is the employer and I don’t think it’s just the for profit employers. Case in point; Essex County, school systems, healthcare systems, they’re large employers. I think we are absolutely missing opportunities to sit down and work with them. Either on a subcommittee or however, individually, but there definitely part of the solution and I think they want to be, they just don’t know that maybe this group is meeting.

HUGHES: Carol, some of what you just brought up at the beginning of your comment was addressed in that workshop #1 from the Massachusetts delegate who was there. So, I encourage you to listen to some of that.

MASCARENAS: I think Carol, just volunteered to lead the workforce group (laughter), that is what I think.

HUGHES: Done

MASCARENAS: No, really, she might be the most appropriate.

HUGHES: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I want to say that the Land Bank was only successful, because kind of like that elephant analogy, you made. Somebody came in and talked to us about it and then a couple of people got following up on it, made some calls and then the next thing you know, we have a video link of a Zoom meeting with somebody from Syracuse which spurred some other ideas, which spurred some conversation with Mike and the Chairman and the Vice-Chairman and the next thing, you know, we got a Land Bank; right? So, don’t wait for something to happen, be the change agent. If there is something that you heard today or something that you think is in your area of expertise and you think that you can put a couple of minutes of time into it, put the minutes of time into it and find other people in this room, I will be one of them to support you in getting that done. I know Jim, would, too, I know Mike would, all of us. If there is something that you think, that you want to do this year, for me, it’s about blight. I’m taking that, I am going to find out what we can do about blight. I’m tired of blight and I want to see blight improved. I want to see that mitigated and improved for property values and just for the general aesthetics of our communities, both our local, 18 towns and the entire county, as a whole. That’s what I am going to be looking at, that’s my goal for this year. So, if you have an individual thing that you want to look at, go for it, get in, dig deep and ask for help. You can always ask me for help. I am happy to do that.

MASCARENAS: So, one thing I did, 18 years ago, 17 years ago, I don’t know, when I was, the Anna Reynolds, blight was a big concern for the Board and you see that we got nowhere. I went to any community that would let me, that’s the other challenge, we have 18 towns with 18 different ideas, and tried to get lists from their code enforcement on blight in their town. We collected a good amount of information at that time, and we were using it as a tool to try and remote funding to rural areas. The State came out with funding , but it never got as low as us, they defined it by population like Troy got a lot of money around that kind of thing, and whatnot, back then. But, it would still be a good tool to start dealing with that and I think we can come up with a shared cost analyst, you and I, between town and county, based on some of your suggestions, pretty easy and at least it would give people a tool. So, I’m with you on that. I think we could do that, sooner rather than later and I’m willing to take some of that on.

HUGHES: I want to come back to Jim’s thing, before we adjourn. I do agree with the tasks situation, of identifying what we feel the barriers are from our own individual chairs, our own individual responsibilities. So, if you want to shoot, I guess shoot me that list of what you personally feel from your professional responsibilities are the barriers to improving the housing crisis that we have, I’ll take that within the next week or two and then we can coordinate all of that and use that as our point of departure for our next meeting and identify common themes and low hanging fruit to then begin tackling what our conversation is going to be for 2025.

MURPHY: Do you want to give us a firm deadline? That’s always a better idea.

HUGHES: Yup, so let’s say, today is the 27^th. Let’s do a deadline of the 10^th of February. It gets people two weeks to think about that.

MORSE: Do you want us to do every barrier we can actually think of or the ones that keep us up at night?

HUGHES: Yes, why not? Two lists

MURPHY: Do you want us to prioritize them?

HUGHES: Yeah, prioritize, if you want.

MURPHY: And can I just respond a little bit to what Mike, said, like I hear what you’re saying, but I do think that people should appreciate that a lot of work has been done. Things like blight, move. You know, new certain circumstances come up. So, we’re probably never going to eliminate blight, because, like for example, happened in our town, an older couple dies and then the children own the house and people think they’re going to come up and then they don’t.

HUGHES: That’s the Heir’s Property.

MURPHY: And that happens and it’s a slow decline.

HUGHES: Yup

MURPHY: And so, you know, there had been a lot of work done, but it moves and it morphs and it changes for different circumstances, so we have to always to vigilant.

MASCARENAS: Yeah and I wasn’t taking a shot at anybody or anything, so don’t think that.

MURPHY: No, no, I wanted you to feel better about your situation. You did a lot of work and I felt bad.

MASCARENAS: My tombstone is going to be, all I can see are the things that keep me up at night, didn’t get this accomplished, didn’t get this accomplished, right, but the one thing that I would like to understand, even a little bit better, is what are the barriers for ROOTS and what are the barriers for North Country? Like where do they stop, because I think that’s where some of our holes really are and our gaps; right? There are housing professionals in the County, so you know.

MURPHY: And sometimes, just as the Supervisor was saying, we have approached families in towns, when we have CDBG Grants and they are not interested in having us work on their home, even though it’s free and clear, you know from them. They don’t need to contribute any extra to it and that is people’s right to do and so there is things like that, like you’re saying, you know some of those folks you may write to, may just ignore you, may just decide they may want to hang on to it, for whatever reason, right now.

HUGHES: Right and respect that.

MURPHY: But, you might, hopefully, get a few takers and that’s what we do every year, is keeping work on it. You got keep plugging away at it and sometime what you’ll find is someone will see, we actually did just have that happen with one of our grants that, you know, it’s a well project and one person wasn’t interested, well then, someone got the new well, the next door neighbor and they start talking and then he calls us up, because now it seems like it’s okay. You know, whatever’s happening, we weren’t selling him a bill of goods or doing something else. So, it can take that, too. There’s a lot of different things to try to figure out how to get people to participate, but they can still chose not to and I don’t think there’s anything that any of us can do about that.

HUGHES: I agree with you, I think it’s the reduction not the elimination. Elimination is not possible, bur reduction is and by doing that, we’re the pathway, a set pathway, a set process that we can replicate, then you’re not recreating, you know, every the situation comes up.

MURPHY: And I agree, a part of it is helping people understand what resources are available, because we tell people all the time about things and it’s always very surprising and we refer people to what I call our sister agencies, sometimes, we may not have the right opportunity for someone, because we restrictions and we have certain grants and other organizations have different grants and we do that all the time, because we want people to get assistance. It’s really about the assistance and getting what they need.

HUGHES: So, thank you, all very much. If you have a 3:00 AM idea, give Mike Mascarenas, a call right in that moment.

MASCARENAS: I’ll be up (laughter).

HUGHES: Appreciate you all very much and we’ll see you

THERE WAS NO FURTHER BUSINESS TO COME BEFORE THIS TASK FORCE WAS ADJOURNED AT 12:15 PM.

Respectively Submitted,

Dina Garvey, Deputy Clerk

Board of Supervisors