This year’s annual meeting of the Adirondack Common Ground Alliance (CGA) focused on the intersection between workforce, housing and economic development.

CGA is a coalition of groups, municipalities and interests working to maintain the environmental and economic integrity of the Adirondack Park. This year’s event at Gore Mountain featured municipal leaders, elected officials, planners, nonprofit executives and environmentalists.

The question of the day was how to deal with the park’s housing crisis, which was exacerbated by the COVID-19 shutdown when thousands of people started buying up housing stock for second homes. Currently, there’s not enough affordable housing to support the needed workforce.  

According to Allison Gaddy, senior planner with the Lake Champlain-Lake George Regional Planning Board, the four-county region of Clinton, Essex, Hamilton and Franklin counties will need about 20,000 “housing interventions." 

“Meaning, we need updates to current housing situations. But over the next 10 years, we will need approximately 7,500 new units to accommodate current and future workforce housing needs,” Gaddy said. 

There are other pressures on housing in the Adirondacks too, including the rise of AirBNBs, zoning regulations that haven’t been updated in decades and costs. While average construction costs in upstate New York are around $250 a square foot, in the Adirondacks, they are upwards of $400.

Capital Tonight’s Susan Arbetter reports on a few of the many challenges facing the Adirondacks, as well as one unique idea to bring both jobs and population to the region.