SARANAC LAKE — The town of Harrietstown has become a New York-certified “pro-housing community,” a designation that will allow the town to tap into $650 million in discretionary finding for projects that help address the affordable housing shortage plaguing the region.

Harrietstown being designated means that all three Tri-Lakes towns and all three Tri-Lakes villages now are pro-housing communities.

“It’s a topic across the Adirondack Park that everyone’s looking at,” town Supervisor Jordanna Mallach said. “By having this designation, it allows us access to money that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.”

The town is also announcing several housing initiatives, taking incremental steps to increase its housing stock and improve the quality of housing in the coming months.

Harrietstown Councilman Jeremy Evans has been focusing on the housing shortage since he got on the board last year. He said that when it comes to basic human needs, shelter is near the top of the list.

“When you can’t find adequate shelter, it makes it really hard to focus on other aspects of life,” Evans said.

The state Division of Housing and Community Renewal started the pro-housing community program last year to address the shortage. North Elba became a pro-housing community in February, followed by the town of Tupper Lake in May. The villages of Saranac Lake and Lake Placid have submitted letters indicating that they intend to seek the designation and the village of Tupper Lake is already certified, according to HCR.

Harrietstown passed a resolution to apply for the designation this spring.

Code Enforcement Officer Todd David and Harrietstown Building and Planning Department Clerk Sarah Hadynski gathered data for the application to show the number of addition or removal of housing units in the town.

HCR approved the town to be designated on June 26.

“By itself, it doesn’t do anything,” Evans said of the designation.

But it makes the town eligible for in grant funding programs totaling $650 million around the state.

Having this designation gives the town more “points” when applying for grants, making it more competitive. Evans said the number of grant programs requiring or prioritizing pro-housing communities has grown significantly since they started. The designation even gives the town points toward non-housing-related grants.

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Housing need

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Mallach said housing is “instrumental” to the continued growth and development of the community.

Evans said if people aren’t experiencing the affordable housing shortage themselves, they likely know someone who is. The price of housing keeps going up, he said, and there’s an increasing number of people can’t afford their homes.

People who grew up here can’t afford to move back, and there are countless stories of potential new residents who can’t move here for jobs, he said. When they can, often the settle for a less-than-ideal living situation, Evans added.

HCR Commissioner RuthAnne Visnaukas’ letter to the town congratulating it on its acceptance into the program laid out the state of housing in New York.

“Rents have risen 40% to 60% since 2015 and home prices have risen 50% to 80%,” Visnaukas wrote. “More than half of New York renters are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on rent — the second-highest rate in the nation.”

Evans said the contributors to the problem are beyond the control of an individual or the town, and some are even out of the state or federal government’s control.

“I don’t think that any of us believes that we should just throw up our hands and say ‘There’s nothing here for us to do, the problems are too big for the town to address,'” Evans said.

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Coming actions

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The town council has been holding monthly work sessions on housing, bringing in leaders in the community to discuss solutions to the pervasive problem.

A phrase throughout this process has been that there is no one “silver bullet” solution to the problem. Any improvement will take a lot of different strategies. Mallach said they need a combination approach — short- and long-term items.

The town identified three coming action items on Monday — a housing resource fair and symposium in November, promoting the building of accessory dwelling units and identifying properties for the Franklin County Land Bank to acquire and return to the active housing stock.

The housing resource fair and symposium has been scheduled tentatively for sometime in early November at the Harrietstown Town Hall. The town is pitching this as a “one stop shop” for anyone who owns or rents to learn about opportunities to help them make finding, buying and maintaining homes affordable.

The town highlights things like grants for energy efficiency upgrades, the benefits of housing trusts and understanding tax and utility bills as information and resources they want people to access.

Mallach said there isn’t one source people can go to for housing information. There’s lots of opportunities to navigate, and she said many people learn about them only through word-of-mouth. She said the town is considering making the town, not “the center,” but “a center” for that information.

Accessory dwelling units, also known as ADUs or “mother-in-law apartments,” are allowed currently in the Harrietstown code. These units, which are additional units on a house’s property, are not allowed everywhere. Some places purposefully don’t allow ADUs because they create density. That density is why the town wants more of them, Evans said.

Personally, he calls ADUs “backyard cottages.”

Mallach said ADUs could have a small, but more immediate, impact.

Evans called this one “low-hanging fruit.”

The town plans to encourage more homeowners to consider taking advantage of this allowance to increase the town’s housing stock. Evans said ADUs can have benefits for both parties.

They can provide property owners with extra income as an investment. They are typically more affordable to rent. While they are not cheap to build, they’re a lot cheaper than a stand-alone housing unit, Evans said, since the cost of land is already taken care of.

The town plans to create a “one-pager” laying out the step-by-step instructions for getting one approved and built, as well as holding at least three presentations on this in the coming year.

The Franklin County Land Bank was created last spring, becoming the first county in the North Country to get approval for a land bank.

A land bank is an entity separate from the county, which works with the county to take properties that have years of delinquent taxes and are run-down or vacant and transfer them to the land bank to renovate and sell to private people for housing, commercial property or a mix of both.

Evans said the land bank is already looking at properties in Tupper Lake and Malone.

Harrietstown plans to use information from its code enforcement officer, assessor and community members to create a list of “underutilized or abandoned properties that might be a good fit for the Franklin County Land Bank to acquire return to the active housing stock.”

The town’s housing work sessions are held at 5 p.m. before the town council’s second board meeting of each month, usually on Thursdays.