The Housing Summit

It's been a while since I last posted – there's a lot happening, and I've been out of town a lot. I'll be updating a few times in the next few days.

Yesterday morning I walked down to Center Street Elementary to take part in the Mayor's Housing Summit. The gymnasium was packed; they had to to bring out a lot more chairs. Great coffee and donuts from Foti's. We were homeowners, landlords, tenants, government officials, realtors, and everyone had a lot to say.

We addressed a handful of questions ranging from fully using the upper floors of downtown buildings to improving the living conditions of seniors. Plans were made for subgroups to go deeper into each challenging area. More to come on this.

To my ears, there was a subtext that was a little disturbing. A lot of conversation revolved around student housing and (less explicitly) low-income neighborhoods. There seemed to be an assumption that living near either group was undesirable, and that high concentrations of either group made development of owner-occupied homes more difficult. Statistics regarding property values may bear this out, and there seemed to be general agreement that they diminish the quality of life in the vicinity. Owner-occupied housing, it appeared, located a discreet distance from student and low-income housing, was the gold standard.

Not that anyone came right out and said this. So – I could be wrong. Explicit or not, this is undoubtedly a widely held approach to the housing questions in any city.

Most of you know where I live – on Center St., next to the creek. We have student houses on two sides, and one of those houses rents to baseball campers in the summer. A lot of folks in difficult circumstances live within a block or two. We're happy to have all of them as neighbors. The only noise problem we've ever had here was when the City put that pump in the creek.

We're all going to be living here in Oneonta for a long time, and it's really too small a town for robust homogenous neighborhoods. For us, that's a good thing. We like the diversity all around us. At the Summit, I talked some with a landlord who owns a lot of student housing, and he was very clear about the standard of behavior he imposes on any renter who wants to stay. It works. Most students are good neighbors, and there are ways to assure that they all are. Poor folks want to live in nice places, in good neighborhoods, just as much as everyone else; sometimes, they just need a little help – or opportunity.

So I'd like to see the work started yesterday to move toward ways of coming together and living cooperatively in the City, and not toward ways of distancing ourselves from each other. I've got some ideas along those lines, so – more to come!