Put up or shut up.
That’s what one Saratoga Springs businessman told the Comprehensive Planning Committee about the city’s approach to affordable housing.
At the Monday, Sept. 24, meeting of the Comprehensive Plan Committee, about two dozen Saratoga Springs residents spoke against a proposed affordable housing project that would sit between the Price Chopper and the Railroad Run trail off of Route 50.
After hearing an outpouring of opposition to developer Garry Olsen’s plan to build 96 townhouse units that would sell for about $150,000 each, fellow area developer Jeff Pfeil bluntly told members of the Comprehensive Plan Committee that when it comes to affordable housing, the city’s all talk.
The problem with Saratoga Springs right now is that everybody talks the talk when it comes to affordable housing, but there have been several projects that have come up to create affordable housing, and they have been kicked right out, said Pfeil. `It’s kind of pathetic. Everybody wants affordable housing, but they don’t want it near them.`
Detractors of the project said it wasn’t an opposition to affordable housing that caused them to turn out, but the numerous problems that would come with putting such density into the strip of light-industrial land.
They said problems would occur with the water table and that the Railroad Run trail would become too much like a playground. Most said it all came down to one thing: density. With 96 units being proposed, many of the neighbors saw the potential for an additional 400 people along the trail.
`Trying to shoehorn that number of people into such a small area is going to be problematic,` said Francis Street resident Joe Petruski.
But Olsen said he would be willing to compromise on the number of units, and therefore the possible increase in density. In a separate interview, he, like Pfeil, said the opposition to the project boiled down to people not wanting affordable housing in their backyards.
`I believe that this is, to a large extent, ‘NIMBY-ism,’` he said, referring to the acronym that stands for `not in my back yard.`
In response to complaints that the project would affect the trail or ruin the viewshed, Olsen said there would be 40 feet of landscaping between the townhomes and the trail, and noted the trash and broken trailers that now occupy the strip he proposes to build on.
Olsen is asking the City Council to give the development Planned Unit Development (PUD) status, which would waive some zoning requirements and generally ease the approval process. Comprehensive Plan Committee Vice Chair Nancy Goldberg noted the previous two plans and the current proposed draft recommend eliminating PUDs.
One Saratoga Springs resident said the townhomes would address a number of people that are commonly left out of the affordable housing equation. When affordable housing projects come up, said Celeste Caruso, many people immediately think of hourly wage earners looking for cheaper rental properties. What is not being addressed, she said, is the large number of people in service industries ` teachers, policemen and firemen ` who cannot afford to buy a home in the city.
`What you’re telling these people is that you can save our lives and teach our children, but you can’t live here,` she said.
The Comprehensive Plan Committee is scheduled to send the final draft plan to the City Council in November.
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