Editorial of April 4, 2024

A Tale of Two Housing Units

Housing. A polarizing topic these days, right up there with politics and religion, it seems. Two of the most divisive news stories in Otsego County these past months involve housing proposals. In the Village of Cooperstown, a proposal by the Templeton Foundation to build housing for Bassett Healthcare Network employees was met with strong opposition when first introduced in January 2023. That project has since gone back to the drawing board, so to speak, to address a handful of environmental concerns. In the City of Oneonta, a proposal by Rehabilitation Support Services continues to cause all kinds of hullabaloo. The vote on that project, expected to take place on April 2, has now been postponed until October.

According to an NPR report on February 17, the hottest trend in New York State cities right now is zoning reform to allow more housing. “America is facing a housing crisis,” the report begins. “The U.S. is short millions of housing units. Half of renters are paying more than a third of their salary in housing costs, and for those looking to buy, scant few homes on the market are affordable for a typical household.”

The report, written by Laurel Wamsley, says cities are finding that their current zoning rules make it too hard and too expensive to build new homes. Sound familiar?

Let’s take a look at the southern end of the county first, and Otsego’s only city. Oneonta Mayor Mark Drnek and other city officials have been called to task for courting the RSS project, but their efforts appear to be in line with “Opportunity Oneonta,” the City of Oneonta Comprehensive Plan, updated in 2019 under then-Mayor Gary Herzig.