Just build, baby. Seriously, we have not built starter homes at scale in NY for 40 years. There is no housing stock available for average and lower wage workers…those we called essential just 4 years ago. 🔨🛠️
There is also a huge problem in our tourist area with about 1/3 of our housing stock being used as short term rentals (and vacation homes). People with cash have found it beneficial (to them) to buy inexpensive homes, use them for their own vacation on occasion, and rent them out as STRs to cover taxes and expenses, build equity, and potentially make a profit.
Meanwhile people looking for a starter home who have saved for a 5% or 10% down payment are locked out by people with quick cash.
Al where in your Substack will I find the solution to the problem you say is fixable, but most local electeds do not have the training to or interest in remedying it.
Second question, Ken Tingley says New York is No. 1 - in people leaving, why then is there a housing shortage?
Housing prices are skyrocketing in many places besides NY, and while there are local factors influencing each state, I think one cause common to all is income inequality. That combined with insufficient housing stock available is a recipe for homelessness if you are a low wage earner. CEOs of companies now make hundreds of times what their workers make, as opposed to maybe 10 or 20 times what they made back in the 50’s. Those ultra high compensation packages apply upward pressure on the middle manager type positions too, but the powers that be can’t be bothered to even raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to keep pace with inflation. Even states that have raised their minimums to $15 or $20 find that it just can’t keep up with housing. So you have a boatload of money chasing not a lot of supply, and, like you said, often for investment purposes. It is a capitalist system, so sellers and builders are going to try to get the best price they can. The median income to be considered upper middle class varies from a low of $95,709 in West Virginia to a high of $168,352 in New Jersey. Arkansas, at $97,647 is the only other state under $100,000. (My source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/what-is-the-median-household-income-for-the-upper-middle-class-in-2024/ar-BB1nUDPe ) If you make a hundred grand a year, $500,000 to buy a house seems doable, even more so if you are a two income household. If you make the average plain old middle class income, which is roughly half of that for upper middle class, buying a decent home starts to look impossible, and if you are low income, it is impossible. Fixing income inequality, that is, reducing the astronomical gap between the highest paid and the lowest paid will be a heavy lift, one which I do not think anyone currently in Congress or running for President has the will to do. But I do think fixing it would go a long way to solving not only the housing problem, but a lot of our social unrest as well.
I’ve made my living for nearly 3 decades now mostly catering to very wealthy 2nd (3rd, 4th,5th) home owners. While they are not directly taking property out of the market for ordinary people the increase in value trickles down … or up.
But there are cases of people taking property off the market for what seems to them reasonable motives. A very wealthy customer speaking to other very wealthy customers once said in front of me (I think he forgot for a moment that I’m not of his class) that he bought the nice little farmhouse in Keene Valley we were standing in because it was at the end of his driveway up the mountain and it came up for sale. He actually said “just anyone could have bought it.” By which he meant that maybe a struggling young family might have bought it and the kids might have left their toys scattered in the yard for him and his wife to have to look at.
But even people like him need workers and services in their little towns and there is an incentive for him to help resolve housing issues and the need to make our small towns work for ordinary folks.
Income is a big part of the equation but there are many other factors and with small adjustments to all the factors it is possible to improve live-ability, but many of the people we elect don’t seem to be creative thinkers or problem solvers.
Oh, I can certainly imagine that conversation!! My parents bought property on a lake where they used to rent a housekeeping cottage and built a log cabin back in the 70’s. No running water or electricity, it was a true camp. We kids just ran wild all summer with all the other kids whose parents did about the same thing. Some of them went so far as to get a well drilled and run electric to theirs, but a lot of them didn’t. Flash forward to now, and even the ones still in the same families have been “improved” by the kids and grandkids of the original owners, that is, tripled or quadrupled in size, they have central heating, AC, fancy kitchens, etc…and yes, a lot of them are STRs. I will say that the only nod to luxury my family has made over the years is recently we had a well drilled, but still no indoor plumbing. We have to go out and use a hand pump!) But anyway, my point is, even our truly humble cottage, by virtue of being in the same area as the others, would be absolutely unaffordable for anyone in my family to buy today. If we were to sell it I guarantee it would be torn down and replaced by a McMansion, and even just the value of the land is well beyond the means of a middle class household. Yet back then my parents were able to buy the lot and build the cabin with just my dad working, my mom stayed at home with us kids. And the other original families were pretty much on the same rung. No one was wealthy. The middle class feels like it has been left behind because it really has been. Trump and his backers have mined that anger and disillusionment and honed it and pointed it at the bogeymen of immigrants and “woke”, but the real enemy of the middle class is Reagan’s trickle down economic theory, which began the process of allowing the rich to get ever richer and started the middle class on its downhill slide.
Republicans pretend cutting taxes and regulations will fix this. Democrats at least recognize something must change, but they’re all over the map in how, and until they get their act together and all start pulling in the same direction they won’t be able to fix it either. And unless both sides give up their addiction to big money donors, the best we can hope for is tinkering around the edges, because the big money donors are the ones who have benefited from the situation and are not likely to give it up out of the goodness of their hearts. Alas.
Mike, what is your source for your for "There is also a huge problem in our tourist area with about 1/3 of our housing stock being used as short term rentals.?
Yes, I should have said STR’s, second homes, etc. The actual rate varies per town and the percentage is of single family homes not total residential units.
Still does not answer the question what is your source for your for "There is also a huge problem in our tourist area with about 1/3 of our housing stock being used as short term rentals.?
Ken do you have a link to specific details? Just to say the Post/Star has reported on rising bed tax revenues from STRs means what? What is the baseline of the rising bed tax revenues and over what period of time?
Actually there are companies whose only business is to scoop houses as the come up for sale or foreclosure. Then they rent them out. Soon the U.S. will be one large company town. Soon enough no regular person will be able to own a home.
The idea that we won't live to see the worst of the climate crisis is shared, but the one thing startling me is that the changes and consequences of carbon pollution are happening in some cases decades sooner than predicted. The homeowners insurance situation might likely be followed by the mortgage crisis, still off in the distance, but when the banks refuse to write multi million dollar loans for large construction project, the economic web will become very difficult. All ready we see barrier island homes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollar become worthless due to rising sea level. Unlike government offices in Florida, the banks can, do and increasingly will consider long term viability of the investment, and without the lens of "woke" but through the lens will it be here long enough for us to get paid. When that answer becomes maybe not , then the real chaos will ensue. So yeah, glad I'm old, glad I live in the northeast and especially New York. On to starter homes in the spirit of Levittown on Long Island, so young families can buy at a price that doesn't require two full time jobs.
There is a good case to be made that we are of course being affected by climate change - just not part of our daily forecast. But those tornadoes, wildfires and hurricanes are costing somebody a lot of money.
I've lived in various parts of New York state quite happily my entire life -- western, central, Capital Region, and North Country. And during that time, the political environment and public policy choices made by states' governors and legislatures would never have been a consideration in my choice of where to live.
Until now.
Today, I'd have a hard time even considering a move to states like Florida, Texas, and others where public policy and the political environment have been turned back to the 50's. (No, not the 1950's, but the 1850's.) That's nothing against the people who live in those states, just most of the elected politicians.
No state government is perfect -- especially New York, with its gritty politics and history of graft. But for me it has heart in its public policies. More heart than I see in many other parts of this country.
All good points. When my son lived in Texas I was surprised to learn that Texas had its own electrical grid and when they had unusual ice storms a few years ago, the whole thing came crashing down and took some time to fix. Same thing with the doubling of home insurance in Florida. The one natural disaster I believe is possible in our neck of the woods is another catastrophic ice storm like the one that crippled the North Country some time back. We seem to be having more ice storms. I wonder if there are National Grid statistics that show rising winter repairs?
Sadly, Texas is still struggling with its go-it-alone-electrical grid and the current storm damage:
“It’s not just during a storm: Texas in general tends to have more outages on a blue sky day than other states,” said Doug Lewin, an energy consultant and the author of the Texas Energy and Power newsletter. “We rank very poorly compared to other states. We’ve got a long way to go.” (NYT)
We are seeing a lot more costs due to flooding in this region. Typically it is more localized but a road washed out here and there at $1 million replacement cost starts to add up pretty quickly.
It is frustrating to me that leaders in Warren County are decades behind the curve in getting ahead of necessary infrastructure improvements to avoid much more costly emergency repairs. They say they are being “fiscally conservative” but in the long term they are costing us and future generations more money.
Everybody remembers the bit in the Declaration “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but that is just some flowery language giving examples. The critical phrase follows: “… to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Government is not the enemy, government secures people’s rights but only when it derives powers - not any old powers, just powers, from consent of the governed.
We have a serious problem with a large segment of our population denying consent - people like Elise Stefanik and GOP leadership - for the simple purpose of gaining unjust power.
And we have a judiciary that denies long recognized rights through unjust readings of our founding documents.
While lots of people complain about taxes, most local GOP elected leaders prominently among them, the GOP supervisors in Washington County are pushing for a 1% increase in their sales tax from 7% to 8%.
Washington, Warren, and Saratoga counties are the 3 remaining counties in the state with sales tax of 7% all the rest at 8% or more except for one other which is moving to 8% soon.
It would be difficult for Washington county to raise its tax rate alone because it is nearly surrounded by Vermont with 6% rate and Warren and Saratoga with 7% rate. So those supervisors are asking Warren and Saratoga counties to raise their sales tax rate to 8% as well.
Washington county is in a pinch because their expenses of providing mandated services are rising, their population is falling, and they don’t want to increase property tax but one would think that representatives so philosophically opposed to higher taxes would be working on a supply side resolution to their budgetary difficulties.
I'll bet the average consumer does not even know what the sales tax rate is and considering our dependence on tourism, I rarely ask the what the sales tax is when buying something on vacation.
You would be surprised. I know plenty of people who will drive their big truck getting maybe 18 mpg 10 miles taking an extra half hour of their time to drive to get gas at USA in SGF to save 8 or 10¢ per gallon. The end result is likely a wash, or maybe a slight savings. People do not consider economics logically.
It is true that about 1/3 of our sales tax revenue comes from non-residents. Why can’t we use some of our bed tax money to promote our lowest in the state sales tax? I already have a motto: Come to play, and stay another day! Save at our discount retail stores!
I don't think I'll ever forget the boondoggle proposal a few years ago from one of the former Queensbury At-large Supervisors to increase the Warren County sales tax. They would then somehow engineer a rebate to property owners through a reduction in the school property tax. The idea was to have tourists bear the cost of the increase. Of course, what they wouldn't tell you is that renters, both residential and business, would also bear the cost of the increase as they would not be getting any rebate.
I did not mean to indicate there would be a net reduction in school tax revenue. I should have said the boondoggle proposal included a provision to send the increase in sales tax revenue to local school districts, who would then pass it on to property owners in a rebate of some type. I should have been more clear. Even if the scheme worked in practice, renters would be paying the increased sales tax while property owners would benefit.
On the flip side, there are people like me who are moving into the region from other states (I relocated last fall). And I ended up in the region due to the crazy housing prices of Vermont, where I had originally wanted to be, and their complete lack of housing. I couldn’t be happier with my choice of Glens Falls and while certainly I’d love lower taxes, what the region offers certainly makes up for it!
People leaving N.Y. is nothing new, we have been seeding the nation with our people since day 1 of the USA. The current rate of people leaving the state is in large measure one of demographics.
Too much emphasis is put on outmigration and very little time is spent on considering in-migration. As Ken notes we are likely in the near future to be a center of in-migration.
Here in Warren County we are not losing population, we are growing, slightly. But Queensbury and Glens Falls are growing substantially while most of the rest of the county is losing population.
We need elected leaders who are thinking more about providing, preserving, and improving the infrastructure that people who move here find attractive.
Most of the vital energy of our business and social community is derived from people who migrate here whether from other places in N.Y., other states, or other nations. We need to be more welcoming and supportive of those people.
Given the increasing prevalence of droughts throughout the west and southwest, I would expect a reverse migration in the years to come to water-rich states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I would also expect the southwest to cast a greedy eye on the fresh waters of the Great Lakes. A massive pipeline and aqueduct system could redirect water to the southwest, but at great cost to the environment and economy. We are fortunate here in upstate NY to have an ample supply of fresh water.
I am one of those New Yorkers who retired and left the state last year. My daughter left for Seattle in 2001 to go to graduate school and never returned. She got a job right out of college in Seattle, went through a layoff after 10 years. Then found her dream job and plans to stay here as long as she can. Seattle. Washington is full of young people living their dream. It is expensive and many will never own their own home unless they move to the small outside cities near Seattle. My daughter picked Seattle since she was born low vision and would never drive. Seattle has one of the greatest public transportation systems. My daughter was a renter for 20 years and bought a condo during the pandemic when interest rates got down to 2 1/2%. I have visited all these years and never thought about moving here until the pandemic. Washington State is a beautiful state with beautiful summers, and it does not get dark until almost 10pm. I sold my home, my car and furniture and started fresh being a renter and taking public transportation. I have met so many people my age from all over the US, they too had their children move to Seattle and they have followed them here when they retired. They all said the same thing. There were no jobs for their grown children to come home too. The jobs in tech were on the West Coast and they too did as I did, moved here to be near their grown children. They followed them here and like me, they have found other seniors at their volunteer jobs to bond to. The difference here is all I see is younger people, on the streets, in the grocery stores, in the restaurants. Jogging with their dogs and some are settling down buying expensive 100-year-old small Craftsman bungalow homes for over a million that would cost $200,000 in Glens Falls. The difference is these young people are making $200,000 and more at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and I could list another 50 tech companies. They are all here doing their thing, since Washington State does not have a state income tax. I think the story is that as folks retire and if they had children, they are moving closer to them. They could still move to a southern state since there are jobs, homes that are affordable to raise a family and lower state income taxes or like Florida, Tennessee and Texas not having one at all. I think this time the grown children and possible grandchildren are the driver for leaving NY. It was for me.
No doubt that Seattle area is an outstanding area to live - although I remember the traffic being pretty bad - and it has lots of rain. Lots of water. All plusses. And most importantly, it is not Florida.
I thought that as well, I mean the weather. I usually visited in November and December around the holidays. I really never came in the summer. The summer is glorious, blue skies and the weather is low 70's and at night it gets down to the 50's except this week, we are in the 80's now. Seattle is known for the least number of homes or apartments that have air conditioning. Only 50% of places have air conditioning. It is rainy here in the winter versus snow. Folks who live here do not carry umbrellas, because it is more of the misty light rain...they consider themselves tough with their Eddie Bauer rain jackets (Eddie Bauer started here in 1920). It is also a place of casual dress, since they also started the grunge movement in the 90's and still do not want to dress up. It really does not get below 40 degrees and I was shocked to see homes with palm trees. I agree traffic is crazy but for the last 20 years a lot of new apartments and office buildings are built with low parking or no parking to encourage use of buses and light rail, which I can take for a $1 as a senior and children under 18 it is free, since they take public transportation to school versus school buses. You are right about not being the south, since we do not get that horrible humid weather in the summer and for some strange reason, we do not have a lot of bugs.
Actually Ken, California has the highest taxes in the country. New York is #8 on the list of higher taxes.
Also, back in the '70's, I lived in Virginia, Alabama, and Texas and was told by a friend in Texas that the reason property and school taxes are so low there is because they have a 50/50 chance of losing their homes to either a hurricane or tornado.
Regarding the Declaration of Independence segment - Beau of the 5th Column read the entire thing including the grievances on or around the 4th. I am ashamed to say I had either never read the whole thing or perhaps (age) had forgotten. It was very informative - some of the grievances (not the language) ring true today!!
And NYS taxes? I think possibly we forget that in most cases we get what we pay for! Sure the taxes are low in these other states (southern) but the amenities are non-existent far too much of the time - remember? They refuse medicare access in many instances.
That is also what struck me and the point Don was making in his post. We had a revolution to eliminate the ties to a king. And now we seem to be trying to bring a king back.
We retired here in 1998 from southeastern Ohio., on the Ohio River. Friends often commented, “You’re going north? You should head south.” We wanted to be near family. Thus, the choice was between Indiana (south or north of Indianapolis) or the Glens Falls area. Every summer, as a family we had vacationed in the ADKs, so the Hoosiers would visit here and we would visit in Indiana. Our son Tim, an attorney, had settled here. (To be perfectly honest, as much as we love Tim, the real attraction was his three children :)
We bought an historic home in Hudson Falls for less than we received for the sale of our home in Marietta, Ohio, leaving enough to pay for a new furnace, new windows, and countless repairs and redecorating.
As middle income retirees, our NY State income taxes are minimal. The climate is great, compared to the hot, humid Mid-Ohio Valley and here, where folks know how to deal with snow and cold (and I could x-country ski). The museums, the symphony, the libraries, the college, the parks, et.al, surpass those of any small city in America. And with them comes the history of the region, along with the lakes and mountains (I’m not a 46er, but a33er). Meg is a spinner and weaver, and appreciates the fiber crafts emphases in the area.
Ken: I agree with nearly all your points about people returning to the Northeast, with one disagreement. NYS will not have to open up the Adirondack Forest Preserve to accomodate returning populations. It would require a constitutional amendment to do so and the creation of the Forest Preserve some 120+ years ago is one of the reasons our lakes and streams remain clear and cold. Further, there will be no reason to open up Adirondack wild lands; there is still plenty of private land in the Park that can be developed and plenty of land outside the Park for future development. The Forest Preserve is one of the many things that distinguishes New York from other places and it was the wisdom of forebearers that created it, principally to protect the State's water resources.
My point would be that a national migration from points south would be such a national catastrophe, that any type of due process would probably be suspended because people are coming and there is no way to stop them. That's the type of crisis I envision. Granted decades from now, but that's my prediction.
Given the way climate change is rapidly progressing, I don't think reverse migration is many decades away. If properly managed, it needn't be a catastrophe. Thanks to air conditioning, the south has become overpopulated (at the expense of the northern U.S.) and even air conditioning will not be enough to keep people from deciding that the south is uninhabitable (think sea level rise, flooding, tornados and deadly heat).
Just build, baby. Seriously, we have not built starter homes at scale in NY for 40 years. There is no housing stock available for average and lower wage workers…those we called essential just 4 years ago. 🔨🛠️
https://albellenchia.substack.com/p/building-walls?r=7wk5d
There is also a huge problem in our tourist area with about 1/3 of our housing stock being used as short term rentals (and vacation homes). People with cash have found it beneficial (to them) to buy inexpensive homes, use them for their own vacation on occasion, and rent them out as STRs to cover taxes and expenses, build equity, and potentially make a profit.
Meanwhile people looking for a starter home who have saved for a 5% or 10% down payment are locked out by people with quick cash.
Yes, that definitely part of the problem in many areas. It’s fixable, but most local electeds do not have the training to or interest in remedying it.
Al if it is fixable what is your solution to the problem?
There is no single solution. See the writings on my Substack about what we are doing.
Al where in your Substack will I find the solution to the problem you say is fixable, but most local electeds do not have the training to or interest in remedying it.
Second question, Ken Tingley says New York is No. 1 - in people leaving, why then is there a housing shortage?
“Affordable “ housing. Short term rentals.
You’ll have to read my posts.
Housing prices are skyrocketing in many places besides NY, and while there are local factors influencing each state, I think one cause common to all is income inequality. That combined with insufficient housing stock available is a recipe for homelessness if you are a low wage earner. CEOs of companies now make hundreds of times what their workers make, as opposed to maybe 10 or 20 times what they made back in the 50’s. Those ultra high compensation packages apply upward pressure on the middle manager type positions too, but the powers that be can’t be bothered to even raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to keep pace with inflation. Even states that have raised their minimums to $15 or $20 find that it just can’t keep up with housing. So you have a boatload of money chasing not a lot of supply, and, like you said, often for investment purposes. It is a capitalist system, so sellers and builders are going to try to get the best price they can. The median income to be considered upper middle class varies from a low of $95,709 in West Virginia to a high of $168,352 in New Jersey. Arkansas, at $97,647 is the only other state under $100,000. (My source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/what-is-the-median-household-income-for-the-upper-middle-class-in-2024/ar-BB1nUDPe ) If you make a hundred grand a year, $500,000 to buy a house seems doable, even more so if you are a two income household. If you make the average plain old middle class income, which is roughly half of that for upper middle class, buying a decent home starts to look impossible, and if you are low income, it is impossible. Fixing income inequality, that is, reducing the astronomical gap between the highest paid and the lowest paid will be a heavy lift, one which I do not think anyone currently in Congress or running for President has the will to do. But I do think fixing it would go a long way to solving not only the housing problem, but a lot of our social unrest as well.
I’ve made my living for nearly 3 decades now mostly catering to very wealthy 2nd (3rd, 4th,5th) home owners. While they are not directly taking property out of the market for ordinary people the increase in value trickles down … or up.
But there are cases of people taking property off the market for what seems to them reasonable motives. A very wealthy customer speaking to other very wealthy customers once said in front of me (I think he forgot for a moment that I’m not of his class) that he bought the nice little farmhouse in Keene Valley we were standing in because it was at the end of his driveway up the mountain and it came up for sale. He actually said “just anyone could have bought it.” By which he meant that maybe a struggling young family might have bought it and the kids might have left their toys scattered in the yard for him and his wife to have to look at.
But even people like him need workers and services in their little towns and there is an incentive for him to help resolve housing issues and the need to make our small towns work for ordinary folks.
Income is a big part of the equation but there are many other factors and with small adjustments to all the factors it is possible to improve live-ability, but many of the people we elect don’t seem to be creative thinkers or problem solvers.
Oh, I can certainly imagine that conversation!! My parents bought property on a lake where they used to rent a housekeeping cottage and built a log cabin back in the 70’s. No running water or electricity, it was a true camp. We kids just ran wild all summer with all the other kids whose parents did about the same thing. Some of them went so far as to get a well drilled and run electric to theirs, but a lot of them didn’t. Flash forward to now, and even the ones still in the same families have been “improved” by the kids and grandkids of the original owners, that is, tripled or quadrupled in size, they have central heating, AC, fancy kitchens, etc…and yes, a lot of them are STRs. I will say that the only nod to luxury my family has made over the years is recently we had a well drilled, but still no indoor plumbing. We have to go out and use a hand pump!) But anyway, my point is, even our truly humble cottage, by virtue of being in the same area as the others, would be absolutely unaffordable for anyone in my family to buy today. If we were to sell it I guarantee it would be torn down and replaced by a McMansion, and even just the value of the land is well beyond the means of a middle class household. Yet back then my parents were able to buy the lot and build the cabin with just my dad working, my mom stayed at home with us kids. And the other original families were pretty much on the same rung. No one was wealthy. The middle class feels like it has been left behind because it really has been. Trump and his backers have mined that anger and disillusionment and honed it and pointed it at the bogeymen of immigrants and “woke”, but the real enemy of the middle class is Reagan’s trickle down economic theory, which began the process of allowing the rich to get ever richer and started the middle class on its downhill slide.
Read this and pay attention to the dates:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
Republicans pretend cutting taxes and regulations will fix this. Democrats at least recognize something must change, but they’re all over the map in how, and until they get their act together and all start pulling in the same direction they won’t be able to fix it either. And unless both sides give up their addiction to big money donors, the best we can hope for is tinkering around the edges, because the big money donors are the ones who have benefited from the situation and are not likely to give it up out of the goodness of their hearts. Alas.
Mike, what is your source for your for "There is also a huge problem in our tourist area with about 1/3 of our housing stock being used as short term rentals.?
Yes, I should have said STR’s, second homes, etc. The actual rate varies per town and the percentage is of single family homes not total residential units.
Still does not answer the question what is your source for your for "There is also a huge problem in our tourist area with about 1/3 of our housing stock being used as short term rentals.?
I read a lot of county and various town records, along with news. I can’t give you a source for people who have cash are buying homes either.
Post/Star has reported on rising bed tax revenues from STRs.
Ken do you have a link to specific details? Just to say the Post/Star has reported on rising bed tax revenues from STRs means what? What is the baseline of the rising bed tax revenues and over what period of time?
Actually there are companies whose only business is to scoop houses as the come up for sale or foreclosure. Then they rent them out. Soon the U.S. will be one large company town. Soon enough no regular person will be able to own a home.
This is a huge problem caused largely by three issues: exclusionary zoning, the proliferation of short term rentals and in some places, xenophobia.
Spot on!
The idea that we won't live to see the worst of the climate crisis is shared, but the one thing startling me is that the changes and consequences of carbon pollution are happening in some cases decades sooner than predicted. The homeowners insurance situation might likely be followed by the mortgage crisis, still off in the distance, but when the banks refuse to write multi million dollar loans for large construction project, the economic web will become very difficult. All ready we see barrier island homes that cost hundreds of thousands of dollar become worthless due to rising sea level. Unlike government offices in Florida, the banks can, do and increasingly will consider long term viability of the investment, and without the lens of "woke" but through the lens will it be here long enough for us to get paid. When that answer becomes maybe not , then the real chaos will ensue. So yeah, glad I'm old, glad I live in the northeast and especially New York. On to starter homes in the spirit of Levittown on Long Island, so young families can buy at a price that doesn't require two full time jobs.
There is a good case to be made that we are of course being affected by climate change - just not part of our daily forecast. But those tornadoes, wildfires and hurricanes are costing somebody a lot of money.
I've lived in various parts of New York state quite happily my entire life -- western, central, Capital Region, and North Country. And during that time, the political environment and public policy choices made by states' governors and legislatures would never have been a consideration in my choice of where to live.
Until now.
Today, I'd have a hard time even considering a move to states like Florida, Texas, and others where public policy and the political environment have been turned back to the 50's. (No, not the 1950's, but the 1850's.) That's nothing against the people who live in those states, just most of the elected politicians.
No state government is perfect -- especially New York, with its gritty politics and history of graft. But for me it has heart in its public policies. More heart than I see in many other parts of this country.
All good points. When my son lived in Texas I was surprised to learn that Texas had its own electrical grid and when they had unusual ice storms a few years ago, the whole thing came crashing down and took some time to fix. Same thing with the doubling of home insurance in Florida. The one natural disaster I believe is possible in our neck of the woods is another catastrophic ice storm like the one that crippled the North Country some time back. We seem to be having more ice storms. I wonder if there are National Grid statistics that show rising winter repairs?
Sadly, Texas is still struggling with its go-it-alone-electrical grid and the current storm damage:
“It’s not just during a storm: Texas in general tends to have more outages on a blue sky day than other states,” said Doug Lewin, an energy consultant and the author of the Texas Energy and Power newsletter. “We rank very poorly compared to other states. We’ve got a long way to go.” (NYT)
We are seeing a lot more costs due to flooding in this region. Typically it is more localized but a road washed out here and there at $1 million replacement cost starts to add up pretty quickly.
It is frustrating to me that leaders in Warren County are decades behind the curve in getting ahead of necessary infrastructure improvements to avoid much more costly emergency repairs. They say they are being “fiscally conservative” but in the long term they are costing us and future generations more money.
Everybody remembers the bit in the Declaration “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but that is just some flowery language giving examples. The critical phrase follows: “… to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Government is not the enemy, government secures people’s rights but only when it derives powers - not any old powers, just powers, from consent of the governed.
We have a serious problem with a large segment of our population denying consent - people like Elise Stefanik and GOP leadership - for the simple purpose of gaining unjust power.
And we have a judiciary that denies long recognized rights through unjust readings of our founding documents.
You are making me depressed again.
While lots of people complain about taxes, most local GOP elected leaders prominently among them, the GOP supervisors in Washington County are pushing for a 1% increase in their sales tax from 7% to 8%.
Washington, Warren, and Saratoga counties are the 3 remaining counties in the state with sales tax of 7% all the rest at 8% or more except for one other which is moving to 8% soon.
It would be difficult for Washington county to raise its tax rate alone because it is nearly surrounded by Vermont with 6% rate and Warren and Saratoga with 7% rate. So those supervisors are asking Warren and Saratoga counties to raise their sales tax rate to 8% as well.
Washington county is in a pinch because their expenses of providing mandated services are rising, their population is falling, and they don’t want to increase property tax but one would think that representatives so philosophically opposed to higher taxes would be working on a supply side resolution to their budgetary difficulties.
I'll bet the average consumer does not even know what the sales tax rate is and considering our dependence on tourism, I rarely ask the what the sales tax is when buying something on vacation.
You would be surprised. I know plenty of people who will drive their big truck getting maybe 18 mpg 10 miles taking an extra half hour of their time to drive to get gas at USA in SGF to save 8 or 10¢ per gallon. The end result is likely a wash, or maybe a slight savings. People do not consider economics logically.
It is true that about 1/3 of our sales tax revenue comes from non-residents. Why can’t we use some of our bed tax money to promote our lowest in the state sales tax? I already have a motto: Come to play, and stay another day! Save at our discount retail stores!
I don't think I'll ever forget the boondoggle proposal a few years ago from one of the former Queensbury At-large Supervisors to increase the Warren County sales tax. They would then somehow engineer a rebate to property owners through a reduction in the school property tax. The idea was to have tourists bear the cost of the increase. Of course, what they wouldn't tell you is that renters, both residential and business, would also bear the cost of the increase as they would not be getting any rebate.
…and the reduction in the school property tax would/could impact the quality of education.
I did not mean to indicate there would be a net reduction in school tax revenue. I should have said the boondoggle proposal included a provision to send the increase in sales tax revenue to local school districts, who would then pass it on to property owners in a rebate of some type. I should have been more clear. Even if the scheme worked in practice, renters would be paying the increased sales tax while property owners would benefit.
Thanks for the clarification, Bob!
On the flip side, there are people like me who are moving into the region from other states (I relocated last fall). And I ended up in the region due to the crazy housing prices of Vermont, where I had originally wanted to be, and their complete lack of housing. I couldn’t be happier with my choice of Glens Falls and while certainly I’d love lower taxes, what the region offers certainly makes up for it!
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This is such an important comment!
People leaving N.Y. is nothing new, we have been seeding the nation with our people since day 1 of the USA. The current rate of people leaving the state is in large measure one of demographics.
Too much emphasis is put on outmigration and very little time is spent on considering in-migration. As Ken notes we are likely in the near future to be a center of in-migration.
Here in Warren County we are not losing population, we are growing, slightly. But Queensbury and Glens Falls are growing substantially while most of the rest of the county is losing population.
We need elected leaders who are thinking more about providing, preserving, and improving the infrastructure that people who move here find attractive.
Most of the vital energy of our business and social community is derived from people who migrate here whether from other places in N.Y., other states, or other nations. We need to be more welcoming and supportive of those people.
Thanks for moving here! Tell us how to be better.
Given the increasing prevalence of droughts throughout the west and southwest, I would expect a reverse migration in the years to come to water-rich states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I would also expect the southwest to cast a greedy eye on the fresh waters of the Great Lakes. A massive pipeline and aqueduct system could redirect water to the southwest, but at great cost to the environment and economy. We are fortunate here in upstate NY to have an ample supply of fresh water.
Agree. Cities like Los Angeles and Cairo rely on piped in water. We have lots of water around here.
So far! Let's keep our fingers crossed.
Hi Bert Perhaps that’s why Just Water https://justwater.com/ end up in Glens Falls. The liquid gold of the future, then and now.
And they got a great deal.
Ken who got a great deal? Just Water or Glens Falls?
Please send an address where I can buy my subscription. I don’t pay any bills on line.
301 Butler Pond Rd
Queensbury, NY 12804
I am one of those New Yorkers who retired and left the state last year. My daughter left for Seattle in 2001 to go to graduate school and never returned. She got a job right out of college in Seattle, went through a layoff after 10 years. Then found her dream job and plans to stay here as long as she can. Seattle. Washington is full of young people living their dream. It is expensive and many will never own their own home unless they move to the small outside cities near Seattle. My daughter picked Seattle since she was born low vision and would never drive. Seattle has one of the greatest public transportation systems. My daughter was a renter for 20 years and bought a condo during the pandemic when interest rates got down to 2 1/2%. I have visited all these years and never thought about moving here until the pandemic. Washington State is a beautiful state with beautiful summers, and it does not get dark until almost 10pm. I sold my home, my car and furniture and started fresh being a renter and taking public transportation. I have met so many people my age from all over the US, they too had their children move to Seattle and they have followed them here when they retired. They all said the same thing. There were no jobs for their grown children to come home too. The jobs in tech were on the West Coast and they too did as I did, moved here to be near their grown children. They followed them here and like me, they have found other seniors at their volunteer jobs to bond to. The difference here is all I see is younger people, on the streets, in the grocery stores, in the restaurants. Jogging with their dogs and some are settling down buying expensive 100-year-old small Craftsman bungalow homes for over a million that would cost $200,000 in Glens Falls. The difference is these young people are making $200,000 and more at Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and I could list another 50 tech companies. They are all here doing their thing, since Washington State does not have a state income tax. I think the story is that as folks retire and if they had children, they are moving closer to them. They could still move to a southern state since there are jobs, homes that are affordable to raise a family and lower state income taxes or like Florida, Tennessee and Texas not having one at all. I think this time the grown children and possible grandchildren are the driver for leaving NY. It was for me.
No doubt that Seattle area is an outstanding area to live - although I remember the traffic being pretty bad - and it has lots of rain. Lots of water. All plusses. And most importantly, it is not Florida.
I thought that as well, I mean the weather. I usually visited in November and December around the holidays. I really never came in the summer. The summer is glorious, blue skies and the weather is low 70's and at night it gets down to the 50's except this week, we are in the 80's now. Seattle is known for the least number of homes or apartments that have air conditioning. Only 50% of places have air conditioning. It is rainy here in the winter versus snow. Folks who live here do not carry umbrellas, because it is more of the misty light rain...they consider themselves tough with their Eddie Bauer rain jackets (Eddie Bauer started here in 1920). It is also a place of casual dress, since they also started the grunge movement in the 90's and still do not want to dress up. It really does not get below 40 degrees and I was shocked to see homes with palm trees. I agree traffic is crazy but for the last 20 years a lot of new apartments and office buildings are built with low parking or no parking to encourage use of buses and light rail, which I can take for a $1 as a senior and children under 18 it is free, since they take public transportation to school versus school buses. You are right about not being the south, since we do not get that horrible humid weather in the summer and for some strange reason, we do not have a lot of bugs.
Actually Ken, California has the highest taxes in the country. New York is #8 on the list of higher taxes.
Also, back in the '70's, I lived in Virginia, Alabama, and Texas and was told by a friend in Texas that the reason property and school taxes are so low there is because they have a 50/50 chance of losing their homes to either a hurricane or tornado.
The Times-Union article said that NY had highest taxes so that was my source. But obviously, there are a lot of ways to interpret thos stats.
Sometimes it's addition by subtraction. The Trump crime family moves to Florida... and voila! The crime rate in NYS goes down.
Laughed out loud at that one.
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Regarding the Declaration of Independence segment - Beau of the 5th Column read the entire thing including the grievances on or around the 4th. I am ashamed to say I had either never read the whole thing or perhaps (age) had forgotten. It was very informative - some of the grievances (not the language) ring true today!!
And NYS taxes? I think possibly we forget that in most cases we get what we pay for! Sure the taxes are low in these other states (southern) but the amenities are non-existent far too much of the time - remember? They refuse medicare access in many instances.
That is also what struck me and the point Don was making in his post. We had a revolution to eliminate the ties to a king. And now we seem to be trying to bring a king back.
I Ggogled it awhile back, and that's what I got.
Thanks, Ken!
We retired here in 1998 from southeastern Ohio., on the Ohio River. Friends often commented, “You’re going north? You should head south.” We wanted to be near family. Thus, the choice was between Indiana (south or north of Indianapolis) or the Glens Falls area. Every summer, as a family we had vacationed in the ADKs, so the Hoosiers would visit here and we would visit in Indiana. Our son Tim, an attorney, had settled here. (To be perfectly honest, as much as we love Tim, the real attraction was his three children :)
We bought an historic home in Hudson Falls for less than we received for the sale of our home in Marietta, Ohio, leaving enough to pay for a new furnace, new windows, and countless repairs and redecorating.
As middle income retirees, our NY State income taxes are minimal. The climate is great, compared to the hot, humid Mid-Ohio Valley and here, where folks know how to deal with snow and cold (and I could x-country ski). The museums, the symphony, the libraries, the college, the parks, et.al, surpass those of any small city in America. And with them comes the history of the region, along with the lakes and mountains (I’m not a 46er, but a33er). Meg is a spinner and weaver, and appreciates the fiber crafts emphases in the area.
In short, it is a joy to be here!
Ken: I agree with nearly all your points about people returning to the Northeast, with one disagreement. NYS will not have to open up the Adirondack Forest Preserve to accomodate returning populations. It would require a constitutional amendment to do so and the creation of the Forest Preserve some 120+ years ago is one of the reasons our lakes and streams remain clear and cold. Further, there will be no reason to open up Adirondack wild lands; there is still plenty of private land in the Park that can be developed and plenty of land outside the Park for future development. The Forest Preserve is one of the many things that distinguishes New York from other places and it was the wisdom of forebearers that created it, principally to protect the State's water resources.
My point would be that a national migration from points south would be such a national catastrophe, that any type of due process would probably be suspended because people are coming and there is no way to stop them. That's the type of crisis I envision. Granted decades from now, but that's my prediction.
Given the way climate change is rapidly progressing, I don't think reverse migration is many decades away. If properly managed, it needn't be a catastrophe. Thanks to air conditioning, the south has become overpopulated (at the expense of the northern U.S.) and even air conditioning will not be enough to keep people from deciding that the south is uninhabitable (think sea level rise, flooding, tornados and deadly heat).