Albany’s Housing Construction

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The City of Albany has seen modest housing growth in the last decade, with growth catalyzed primarily by Albany Industrial Development Agency projects that come with significant property tax abatements, with very little single family and duplex housing development that immediately goes on the property tax roll.

There is general agreement that the City needs more housing construction.  The City commissioned a housing audit detailing a housing unit gap in the multi-thousands.  We started our research with 3 questions:

• How much housing is being built in the City of Albany?  
• What catalyzes housing construction?  
• What types of housing are being built?

Housing development should have 3 benefits to the City of Albany:

1. More housing for people to live in (of course)
2. Second order benefits such as decreased crime, lower housing prices, and an increased customer base for businesses
3. Growth in our property tax base

With the trajectory of our housing development we are seeing some, but not enough, of numbers 1 & 2, and little of #3.

To understand the future of housing development we want to examine the last decade to see what catalyzes housing construction and how much housing gets built.  In this data story we analyzed the City’s housing construction from 2016-2025 

For this study we are using 2025 tax roll data that covers the 29,400 properties within the City - both developed and undeveloped.  For any property we can understand its parcel, address, classification (residential, commercial, state-owned, etc), housing type (single family, apartment building), owner information, year built and tax exempt status (yes/no).

We examined all residential properties that have been built between 2016 and 2025, 162 properties total.  

For each property we determined the financing and type of construction for each development, creating 5 categories of development:

• Privately construction. E.g. a single family home built without any form of support
• IDA-assisted private construction - Privately financed residential housing (typically apartment buildings) with City of Albany Industrial Development Agency support in the form of property tax abatements.  (e.g. 745 Broadway built in 2024) 
• IDA-assisted student housing - Privately financed student housing with City of Albany IDA support in the form of property tax abatements (e.g. Auden Albany, built in 2018)
• Non-profit led - Nonprofit construction driven by Habitat for Humanity or St Catherine’s (e.g. Habitat for Humanity’s 100 in 5 project, many of which were supported through American Rescue Plan Act funding)
• Low income housing - Other low income multi-faimly housing projects

To capture the details of Albany IDA’s project involvement we reviewed the IDA’s project list.

Lastly, for each housing development we determined the number of housing units.  We used property classification, IDA information or other internet resources to identify the number of housing units.

For this study we are using 2025 tax roll data that covers the 29,400 properties within the City - both developed and undeveloped.  For any property we can understand its parcel, address, classification (residential, commercial, state-owned, etc), housing type (single family, apartment building), owner information, year built and tax exempt status (yes/no).

We examined all residential properties that have been built between 2016 and 2025, 162 properties total.  

For each property we determined the financing for the property which included:

• Private construction. E.g. a single family home built without any form of support
• IDA-assisted private construction - Privately financed residential housing (typically apartment buildings) with City of Albany Industrial Development Agency support in the form of property tax abatements.  (e.g. 745 Broadway built in 2024) 
• IDA-assisted student housing - Privately financed student housing with City of Albany IDA support in the form of property tax abatements (e.g. Auden Albany, built in 2018)
• Non-profit led - Nonprofit construction driven by Habitat for Humanity or St Catherine’s (e.g. Habitat for Humanity’s 100 in 5 project, many of which were supported through American Rescue Plan Act funding)
• Low income housing - Other low income multi-faimly housing projects

To capture the details of Albany IDA’s project involvement we reviewed the IDA’s project list.

Lastly, for each housing development we determined the number of housing units.  We used property classification, IDA information or other internet resources to identify the number of housing units.

 We can count the number of developments in the last decade by housing type.  By housing type single family homes outweigh every other category of housing.   On an annualized basis the number of single family homes, triplexes and duplexes is very low - in an average year fewer than 15 of these developments happen. 

If we examine the number of housing units built by development type, 2/3 of housing units are built through IDA-assisted private development of apartment buildings.  Non-profit led housing development, primarily through Habitat for Humanity, has provided meaningful housing to several dozen households, but has not proven to be a scalable solution for housing growth. 

Over the last decade we can see the lumpiness of housing units constructed through IDA-assisted projects, variable year-by-year.   

IDA projects lagged post-pandemic, student housing happened at the beginning of the study period but none since, and private construction has a generally consistent (and small) volume year-over-year. 

 IDA-assisted private projects influence the neighborhoods that have the most housing constructed in the last decade.   

Every other neighborhood had fewer than 20 housing units built between 2016 and 2025.

We can visualize the locations on a map:

Legend:

Red = pre-2020 construction; Blue = 2020s construction

Triangles = Single Family Homes; Circles = Duplexes and Triplexes; Diamonds = Large Apartments

If one of the goals of residential development is to add to the City’s property tax roll we can analyze the data to see if this is happening.  

The chart below is the number of housing units, by year, that are being built and immediately taxable for the development's property improvements or tax-exempt (for the property improvements).  Housing units built through IDA-supported projects are typically tax exempt, with alternate PILOT payments over time.

The data clearly suggests that we are adding little housing that immediately goes on the property tax roll.  In the last decade an average of 50 housing units per year have been constructed and immediately added to the tax roll.  If you take away the taxable property added in 2016, for the last 9 years the City has averaged 30 housing units per year (a growth of 0.05-0.1%) that are constructed and immediately added to the property tax roll.

We won’t go into details about the Albany Industrial Development Agency’s property tax abatements; we have written more extensively about the property tax abatements here and here.  However a quick review - the IDA grants property tax abatements on the improvements to the land, including new buildings.  These abatements are typically on a 20 year schedule; this is an example of the property tax abatement schedule for the construction at 191 N Pearl St, built in 2023.  

Playing this out, only in 2041 and beyond will the owner pay half or more of the assessed value of property improvements, 18 years post-construction.   

The City of Albany needs housing of all types, in all neighborhoods, using every lever and tool available.  We want new duplexes off of Whitehall, infill housing on Clinton Ave, a cluster of single family homes to evolve in swaths of undeveloped land west of Hwy 85, and apartment buildings - both market rate and low income - dotted around the City.

In the last decade 75% of the residential housing unit development (setting aside 2 privately-financed student housing projects) has been driven by IDA-supported projects.  If Albany had a comprehensive housing strategy (which it doesn’t) it would be a strategy of putting almost all of our eggs in one IDA-supported basket.  We have found this research paper to be a good aid to understand the benefits and concerns about IDA-supporting housing.

Setting aside the City’s over-dependency on IDA-supported housing, the operative question is what is causing a lack of privately financed single family homes, duplexes, triplex and quadplex housing development?  We suspect a few factors:

1. The appeal of Albany - do household-level concerns about making an investment in a new residential home in the City cause inaction, and do households make their investments elsewhere?
2. The City’s zoning code - which generally limits the types of construction to the housing mix that already exists in areas.
3. NIMBY-ism - zoning appeal meetings bring out all manner of objections - sightlines, “neighborhood character”, parking and more - which shut down some amount of development.
4. The inclusionary zoning law - may have limited some volume of large apartment construction, however this would not have impacted single family home through small (< 20 unit) construction.
5. Costs - is the City adding costs to construction (e.g. permitting) that are above and beyond the costs found elsewhere and/or does the pace of construction lag (due to permitting, approvals, etc) present added cost of capital?

We performed this analysis with a belief that if we don’t understand recent history we won’t be able to influence or change our future housing development behaviors.  Some of those future behaviors include how the City supports the construction of privately financed housing by eliminating costs and barriers to construction.  

There are numerous starting points for these discussions including StrongTowns’s view of a housing-ready city, Yimby’s views into addressing housing barriers, case studies of infill housing, and more.  Importantly, we are not the only City who is facing similar housing development challenges; let’s look at the successes and failures of other cities and learn.

Thoughts, questions, criticisms?  Drop us a note at albanydatastories@gmail.com or respond to any of our social media postings.  

Interested in other pieces that Albany Data Stories has written about housing and development:

• Housing overview
• Taxable & tax exempt property
• Developable land
• Vacant buildings
• Low income housing
• Albany’s Industrial Development Agency and Housing PILOTs
• Inclusive Housing