LAKE PLACID — The North Elba Town Council and the Lake Placid Village Board of Trustees are holding a special meeting tonight to hear presentations about addressing the local housing crisis.

Town and village boards plan to hear two presentations tonight, one on an updated housing plan from the Lake Placid-North Elba Community Development Commission’s Joint Community Housing Committee — or JCHC — and another on a deed restriction program from Old Forge-based nonprofit LivingADK.

Tonight’s meeting is at 5 p.m. in the first-floor meeting room of the North Elba Town Hall. People can also attend the meeting virtually at gotomeet.me/townofnorthelba/board-meeting. People can call into the meeting by dialing 571-317-3122 and entering the access code 350-598-109.

Housing plan

JCHC was formed a few years ago to assess the state of housing in the town and village along with consulting firm Camoin 315, and their efforts resulted in a 2020 housing needs assessment that found the town and village to be facing a “workforce housing crisis.”

The study said that with a target of 50% of the local workforce living within the community, North Elba and Lake Placid have a need for roughly 1,534 “workforce and affordable level” housing units — the majority, 1,013 units, for those who make less than $35,150 per year. In the study, affordable for that income range is defined as less than $879 per month for apartments, and under $123,000 for a home.

JCHC member and North Elba Town Councilor Emily Kilburn Politi said Tuesday that the committee has combined a housing plan that resulted from the 2020 study with a 2014 housing plan that was part of the town and village Comprehensive Plan into a cohesive document, and that’s what the committee plans to present tonight.

The housing committee is a “volunteer task force,” Kilburn Politi said, composed of committee Chair Peter Roland, Jr., village board liaison Jackie Kelly, town council liaison Kilburn Politi, Community Bank Mortgage Lender Alex Nenno, former Harrietstown Housing Authority Executive Director David Aldrich, Mountain Lake Academy Director of Education Jessica Kelly and former Lake Placid Mayor Jaime Rogers.

Kilburn Politi added that the committee is looking to expand its representation with new members.

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Deed restrictions

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Kilburn Politi said that LivingADK Community Development Specialist Daniel Kiefer-Bach will be presenting LivingADK’s new deed restriction program for Old Forge, which she said will be in place this summer. The program, according to Kilburn Politi, is modeled after a program in Vail, Colorado. Vail is a ski resort town that some locals have compared to Lake Placid, in part because of its affordable housing crunch.

Under the program, Kilburn Politi explained, an entity — like the town of North Elba — would offer a property owner a one-time cash payment for something like repairs or a down payment on their housing unit. In return, the property owner would give that entity the right to place a deed restriction on the property saying that it has to be occupied by a “qualified resident.” Kilburn Politi said that the community would need to define what a qualified resident is. For Old Forge, she said, the qualification is that the person would have to be a permanent resident of the area.

Kilburn Politi thought that in Vail, the deed restriction qualifier is that the property would have to be used for people who work at least 30 hours in the local county. She said the community there has thousands of properties in its deed restriction program, adding that a lot of them are investment properties — some owners have turned entire apartment buildings over to the program, she said. The owner gets a one-time payment to help with a property purchase or repairs, Kilburn Politi said, and in return, the property owner guarantees that the housing will be designated for the local workforce.

“So the deed restriction is in perpetuity, and it’s a one-time lump sum payment,” she said.

Kilburn Politi thought that the average lump sump given to deed restriction properties in Vail was around $50,000. She said the town and village aren’t quite at that scale, but she wanted to get the town and village talking about another possible tool to source housing for locals. It’s not an “anti-short term rental” program, she noted — it’s just giving property owners some incentive to offer their housing to long-term residents.