Based on local public debates about housing affordability, you’d be forgiven if you think that the primary cause of the housing crisis is greedy corporate landlords. From public comments, especially by passionate advocates, we are left to imagine building owners meeting in secret, colluding in hiking rents to maximum levels to squeeze as much profit out of renters as possible. Armed with secret handshakes, coded phrases, encrypted texting, slush funds for politicians and bottomless legal resources, these dastardly developers and lawless landlords tirelessly work to deep-six any rule or regulation that may hinder their profits. And because the narrative of the greedy capitalist developer gets repeated over and over again as “truth,” more likely causes of the housing crises are too often overlooked or downplayed. For example, a major cause of our housing crunch is the large mismatch in local inventory — a result of local planning and town boards’ hesitancy towards the construction of multifamily housing. Also contributing to the problem are young local adults leaving and being replaced by more affluent older adults and retirees, and large population disparities between the generations.

This past weekend, I visited with old friends from high school days, and it had me thinking about our time in school and our generation. My graduating class was of the low-birthrate Generation X that followed in the shadows of the much larger and culturally commanding Baby Boomers. Our high school was built to hold 2,000 students, but when I attended it was roughly 1,200. As such it had various pluses and minuses — smaller classroom sizes, but fewer electives, no money for extracurriculars, and threadbare facilities. We can see some similarities today between the smaller-sized Generation Z-ers and the older and larger-sized Millennials. For example, the Onteora School District is considering dropping French classes because so few students take it, and are discussing closing more schools because of dropping enrollment. Although the number of students has declined, taxes go up to cover the costs of an aging infrastructure and consolidation costs. This trend is well-documented in a Pattern for Progress research report titled “Closed Schools, Open Minds” published last year. These facts debunk widespread notions that Ulster’s population is growing. It’s not.

So, if Ulster is not growing, what’s making housing costs rise so much? And felt most painfully by those with more modest or limited incomes? Ulster County’s AMI (average median income) has risen dramatically over the last four years, by 40 percent. This is due to an influx of new, increasingly wealthy homeowners. This in turn has drives the metrics used to calculate rates for “affordability” by federal, state and local governments.

The migration of all this money into Ulster comes at a time of expanding housing regulation at the state and local levels with new ones being proposed, such as the REST Act. This latest proposed law would introduce rent controls statewide and apply to a much wider net of housing types. This contributes to making construction of housing more costly at a time when building rental housing is viewed as a risky investment in New York and locally. Add on top of this the byzantine process of getting site approvals in local boards. Because the construction of affordable, larger multi-family housing projects is so vilified by local NIMBYs and staunch environmentalists, you can understand why private developers remain highly cautious of investing in our community. Local builders have either focused on other states, or concentrated on building or retrofitting dream houses and McMansions for the newly arrived wealthy. To them, that is much more appealing than trying to navigate the headaches and low margins of “affordable housing” projects, even with tax incentives. Maybe we need to try another approach to resolve this bedeviling situation. Swift action is needed today, like what was done in prior generations to alleviate housing crunches. And we need to think about costs as well, as it appears federal and likely state funding for housing may be less available, at least for the time being.

Aside from the City of Kingston, much of Ulster County is low-density and rural in nature. As such, I’ve always wondered why, with all our land, pre-manufactured homes could not be purchased in bulk (thus getting discounts and cost savings for scale) and sited on unused or little-used county, city or even school district and state lands. Some may prefer living in a rural or even forested area versus, say, beside an active railroad line, Interstate highway or industrial area where too often affordable housing projects often get sited.

In 2022 RUPCO’s Landmark Place in Kingston cost on average $379,000 to build studio and one-bedroom apartments (about 500 square feet in size on average). By comparison, it costs roughly $130,000 to purchase a pre-manufactured home (one- to two-bedroom units with 1,200 square feet), and roughly another $50-75,000 for foundation, utilities, and finishes. The approval process for a prefabricated home could be much quicker (especially if standardized) than trying to build multi-family housing developments. And while there are economies of scale by clustering larger numbers of homes on one site, in order to retain our local rural landscape, limits could be set on how many homes could be built on each site. And with UCAT now free, growing micro-transportation alternatives and fast internet service, living in a rural area is no longer quite so isolating. Unlike large permanent constructions like Landmark Place, prefabricated homes may later be moved, modified, or repurposed as the times and demands change.

While not new, the idea of using mobile and pre-manufactured homes as an affordable housing option is once again being explored, and is currently a hot trend in various parts of the U.S. Currently, a mobile-home park located between the towns of Ulster and Hurley, called Gallis Hills Park, is the site of an interesting proposal. For some time now the owners of the mobile home park were not able to adequately maintain the site for its 34 homes, resulting in growing infrastructure problems, including water, septic and road problems. A new proposal is in the works to revitalize the park, backed by a PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes), and supported by state grants. The proposal is to fix the infrastructure problems, replace existing homes with new prefabricated units, and add more units (roughly 12 more) to the property, and rent them at affordable levels.

Prefabricated housing may not sound appealing for some, or generate as much press and community fanfare. But for Ulster County’s rural population, as well as Kingston residents eager for affordable options, development proposals such as these could be implemented fairly quickly, have flexibility over time, and for a rural county like ours, an appropriate option worth much more attention and consideration.