What is Albany's Affordable & Inclusionary Housing program?
What are Inclusionary Housing provisions? Quoting Grounded Network which runs the Inclusionary Housing site, “Local inclusionary housing policies tie the creation of affordable homes for low- and moderate-income households to the construction of market-rate housing or commercial development.”
Albany is the only Capital District community that has Inclusionary Housing provisions in development code and processes.
How much affordable housing is being developed?
Let’s look at the data from the Department of Planning & Development report. The report contains a list of all multi dwelling unit (MDU) housing that is impacted by the Inclusionary Housing requirement between January 2018 and February 2024. The report lists out:
- The project street address
- The date of the original plan submission
- The total number of housing units
- The number of affordable units required by the Unified Sustainable Development Ordinance (USDO)
- If the development is being funded through the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program. All units included in these projects are required to be made affordable
- The project status as of May 2024
We can aggregate the projects, using all of the data except for the two “Expired” projects. If and when the remaining 26 projects are all completed, this would add:
- 2476 total housing units
- 524 housing units developed from the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program
- 108 housing units developed from the Inclusionary Housing provisions
- 632 total low income housing units
what is the mdu growth rate?
For perspective, the 2020 US Census showed that Albany had 48,031 total housing units and 42,158 occupied housing units. If we look at the growth rate in housing driven exclusively through multi dwelling unit (MDU) housing by the 26 projects above we can see that the new MDU housing for the 26 projects grows the City of Albany’s Total Housing Unit count by over 5% if all projects are completed.
Where is the affordable housing being developed?
We created a map to view where the projects are located - https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1945Bm7Ahfcrtq-M79LYKJ9GlNrHT8Vo&usp=sharing
Each housing development is shown on the map with a red house icon. If you click on each location you can see the address, total units, affordable unit requirements, whether or not the development falls under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program and the project status.