The affordable housing crisis continues in New York, and advocates and officials are calling on lawmakers to prioritize the issue before the end of session. In Schenectady four new affordable single-family homes were unveiled on Tuesday - but a much greater solution is needed for this growing problem. I spoke with mayor Gary McCarthy about his hopes when it comes to help from lawmakers in Albany.
"We’re hopeful that the record we have here and Schenectady will be supported by the state legislature, not only for Schenectady but for communities across the state.”
KA: Mayor last question is it the issue of affordable housing or is it that there’s not enough housing in many cases what do you feel?
McCarthy: There’s actually right now both, so there’s a shortage of housing and clearly a need for affordable housing so we are trying to address that in Schenectady so that there’s something for everybody."
Ruthanne Visnauskas is the commissioner for Home and Community Renewal. She tells me how there are many important areas to be addressed when it comes to housing.
"I think we want to make sure that as the state grows and as job growth happens in every community, there's housing available to people at all levels. So that could be very low low moderate-income housing, so it's important for us to make sure that housing is created across that whole spectrum because there is really workers across all spectrums."
Linda Rosenthal is the housing chair for the State Assembly. She tells me progress is being made on some kind of legislation that will hopefully have enough consensus to pass. With the clock winding down, Rosenthal says there’s still time to get something done. With the average rent in the Capital Region up 11 percent since 2020 according to bizjournal -- she's calling the affordable housing issue one of equity.
"The lack of it is what's chasing people out of the state. we recently heard that 200,000 black families were leaving, and the reason is they could not afford the rent and we have to keep our people here."