Outside of New York City, the City of Ithaca has some of the most expensive housing costs in the state. In fact, a recent survey by Dwellsy — the largest rental listing site in the country — has ranked Ithaca as the second most expensive small city in the country to rent a one-bedroom apartment. As of February 2023, the median price for a one-bedroom apartment was $2,003 a month.
According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a one-bedroom apartment at fair market value would cost around $1,127. This is already considered high when compared to the national average.
As a result, it should come as no surprise that the city is dealing with a housing crisis that is leaving more residents at risk of becoming homeless, if they aren’t experiencing homelessness already.
During a recent interview, Common Council member George McGonigal, said that “everybody agrees that the cost of housing in Ithaca is a huge problem” and that it is directly related to homelessness and drug addiction. McGonigal represents Ithaca’s First Ward, which is home to the city’s largest homeless encampment known locally as ‘The Jungle’.
Regarding potential solutions to the growing homeless issue, McGonigal said, “there is no one single simple answer” but that “more affordable housing is a big part of it.” He continued saying “when I say affordable I mean truly affordable, not Ithaca affordable.”
McGonigal says that one of the issues driving up housing costs in the city is that “housing in Ithaca has become an investment for hedge fund groups from downstate that buy up housing and turn it into rental property or short term rental property and that this has an adverse effect on local people.”
He continued saying that the city should make certain laws that place limits on short term rental properties, but that it’s a complicated issue because some residents rely on rental income to remain in their home.
There seems to be unanimous agreement that more affordable housing is necessary to solve Ithaca’s housing crisis. However, building more housing is a long term project. Ithaca’s Director of Planning and Development, Lisa Nichols says that in the meantime, the the working group for unsanctioned encampments on city property that has been created by Mayor Laura Lewis is in the process of crafting a plan to provide basic hygiene and sanitary facilities for unhoused people living in the jungle.
Nichols says that the plan is still in the preliminary stages and has not yet been approved by the Common Council. As a result, the amenities will be offered at the site and who will be overseeing its daily operations remain uncertain.
According to McGonigal, the plan considers placing construction trailers in the southwest part of the city behind WalMart to provide people living in the encampments with hot showers, bathrooms and improved access to social services that will likely be provided through the county. “We're thinking that it's going to be a much safer and more hospitable place for people to camp,” said McGonigal.
When asked about how this proposal is different from a previous proposal called TIDES, McGonigal said, “some of the goals are the same but it's much different than the TIDES proposal.” He continued saying that the TIDES proposal called for “living structures” and that this plan does not. Additionally, he said that TIDES called for “permanent structures for cooking and restrooms” and that the current plan doesn’t include those amenities.
In total, the construction cost of TIDES was estimated to be about $1 million with an additional $600,000 in annual operating costs. The nearly $2 million price tag has seemed to scare away support for the plan in city hall, which has resulted in this scaled back plan being put up for consideration.
Nichols says that the current plan is essentially a “pilot project” that the city can use to “learn from to determine what is next.”
“I think we need a year to test out some solution before we can undertake a judge project like TIDES, if that’s even feasible. We can’t go from A to Z, we need a year to test out solutions and see what works,” said Nicholas. She continued saying that it’s not certain that the city will move in the direction of TIDES, but “the reality is that we need a year to test out some solutions.”
According to McGonigal, “This is kind of a bare bones approach with construction trailers that would have running hot and cold water for showers and either portable toilets or toilets in the trailers.”
McGonigal says that the exact specifications of the plan aren’t agreed upon yet, but he did mention that the setup would be portable rather than permanent.
According to McGonigal, “it’s a very low barrier setup.” He continued saying that “it’s designed to help people get a leg up towards housing. It’s not that they just stay there forever, and it’s not like you can’t go there if you’re still addicted to drugs and still getting high.” Perhaps most importantly, he says that the site will not be “saturated with police presence” and that the one rule is “no violence.”
McGonigal says the plan calls for the city to lease two or three construction trailers using funds from the $100,000 that the city set aside in last year’s budget to address homelessness. In addition, Tompkins County has also set aside funds to address homelessness in The Jungle, but wants to be more involved in the planning process before committing to contributing funds.
The details are still being ironed out, but McGoingal says that “we’re hoping it’s going to be a joint effort between the city and county.” He said that the city is committed to preparing the site, which involves running a water line to the trailers, but that it has not been determined as to who is going to supply the electricity for the site. According to McGoinigal, “It’ll be managing the site that we’ll need help from the county to do.”
According to Nichols, “we have not really sorted out with the county yet or internally who would manage it…whether it would be an outside organization…whether the county would be able to provide social services down there. Those are all the conversations that are going to be happening in the next ten days.”
McGonigal said that, “one of the things we’re hoping to accomplish is making providing social services a lot easier because there will be a more centralized location.” Supporters of the plan hope that it will encourage more people to move to that part of The Jungle to improve access to these services.
The population of the jungle decreases in the winter months as many unhoused individuals qualify for the Code Blue program that places unhoused individuals in hotel rooms on nights when the temperature falls below freezing until April 1st. The actual population of the jungle is uncertain, but following the expiration of Code Blue it is expected to increase again as the weather warms.
Nichols said that so far this year, “an incredibly large number of people took advantage of Code Blue.” According to Nicholas, last year the program provided temporary shelter for 85 people but this winter has seen 250 people take part in the program.
“There's probably at least half a dozen people down at the south, west end of the jungle now. But a lot of those camps will get repopulated when the weather warms up,” said McGonigal.
Similarly to Nichols, McGonigal said that this plan is in preliminary stages of development but that “if this works out, maybe we'll have more infrastructure next year. If it doesn't work out, then we won’t. We haven't really committed a lot of funds to it yet, which is why we’re going slow.”