Is 77% of Otsego County’s low-income housing located in the city of Oneonta?
That’s the claim made in an advertisement that ran in the Thursday, March 28 edition of The Daily Star. It stated, among other things, that 77% of the county’s low-income housing units are in Oneonta.
Luisa Montanti, Fourth Ward resident and Southside Mall general manager, designed and placed the ad under the name Citizens That Care.
Montanti has been an outspoken critic of the city administration’s proposal to sell the property at 27 Market St. to Rehabilitation Support Services Inc. — which provides mental health and substance abuse services, including housing and employment assistance — for redevelopment into a residential and commercial building.
The housing created would utilize “right-sized rents,” a term RSS has been using to describe the way it would determine subsidized rents. People making between 30% and 70% of the regional median income would be eligible for housing aid.
Montanti submitted the calculations used to reach the number of low-income housing units to the city Common Council. Upon inspection, the figures contained a typographical error that threw off the percentage figure, but only by about 1%.
Calculations
The calculations stated that there are 380 subsidized, low-income housing units within the city of Oneonta, including 28 units at Academy Arms, 64 units at Dietz Street Lofts, 24 units at Ford Block Apartments, 30 units at Lettis Apartments, 32 units at Mayrose Apartments, 112 units at Nader Towers, 30 units at Oaks Square Apartments and 60 units at Oneonta Heights.
Another 106 low-income housing units are located outside the city in the county at large, including 24 units at Bronner Manor in Richfield Springs, 10 units at Aiden Park Apartments in Cherry Valley, 20 units at West Hill Terrace in Edmeston, 24 units at Unadilla Neighborhood Apartments in Unadilla and 28 units at Milford Family Housing in Milford.
The calculations did not include any single room occupancy units, where individuals may be housed temporarily, such as hotels, shelters, emergency housing, short-term housing, Department of Social Services placements and halfway houses.
That’s a total of 486 units county-wide, however the last two numbers apparently were switched, and 468 was used as the basis for calculating the percentages presented to the council and in the Daily Star advertisement.
If the number of low-income units is correct, it would put 78.2% of the county’s low-income housing in the city of Oneonta rather than 77.4% — a small error that doesn’t substantially change the meaning of the message: the city of Oneonta contains most of the county’s low-income housing.
Housing
Montanti said Monday, April 1 that four to five people helped research the number of units at each low-income apartment building by calling the building supervisors and using publicly available data online.
Each of the apartment buildings exclusively has low-income units, she said. The figures assume all units are occupied and the buildings have no vacancies.
“It’s not that we don’t want housing,” Montanti said. “We really need to focus on the financial right now. We’re in a crisis.”
City leaders need to focus on economic development, she said.
“We don’t have an abundance of services to provide,” she said. “People will say that’s why we need RSS. But they would only provide 15 units. We probably have 200-plus people that need help … We have the ability to make huge changes in the dynamic in this city. [27 Market St.] has to be on the tax rolls. We cannot afford any more nonprofits in Oneonta.”
The calculations provided by Montanti didn’t look at the number of low-income housing units as compared to the total amount of housing units in the city and outside of it.
Stephen Yerly, city code enforcement officer and deputy community development director said via email Monday that the city’s higher population density justifies its larger number of affordable housing units, and also highlights the need for a nuanced analysis that considers both density and per capita housing availability.
“Given Oneonta’s status as a major population center, its approach to affordable housing must be understood in the context of its population density relative to other areas in Otsego County,” he said. “Such an analysis acknowledges the city’s strategic efforts to address housing needs effectively, promoting equitable growth and development.”
As the sole city and largest population center in Otsego County, Oneonta stands out with its 2020 Census population of 13,079.
“This figure is notably higher than other areas within the county,” Yerly said, “being seven times the population of the village of Cooperstown and 71 times that of the village of Laurens, the county’s smallest village. Oneonta’s considerable population density relative to other communities underlines its pivotal role in regional housing strategies.”
The city of Oneonta’s population density is 2,999.1 inhabitants per square mile, while the population density for the town of Oneonta is 153.9 inhabitants and the entire county is 58.4 inhabitants.
The population density of Richfield Springs is 1,042.7 inhabitants, Unadilla is 90.34 inhabitants, Laurens is 54.96 inhabitants and Edmeston is 39.39 inhabitants.
Montanti also designed a poster that at least one downtown Oneonta business owner hung in the storefront windows on Main Street, Tina Marie’s Salon.
The poster contains the statement that 77% of the county’s low-income housing is in Oneonta.
There are two QR codes — black-and-white square barcodes often used to direct people to website links when scanned a smartphone camera — on the poster.
One links to the city website page with the contact info for the Common Council members.
The other linked to a column by Oneonta Mayor Mark Drnek that was published Aug. 17 on the All Otsego website and in the Hometown Oneonta newspaper as a News from the Noteworthy column, but link is broken.
Darla M. Youngs, general manager and senior editor at All Otsego, said Monday that she changed the headline of the column recently from “Oneonta Can’t Continue as a ‘Dumping Ground’” — a headline she created since the column was submitted without one — to “Oneonta Must Find a Way Forward for All.”
Youngs said Monday that Drnek objected to the headline at the time it was initially published, saying it was misleading, but Youngs stood by her headline choice, until recently.
“Because of the headline, he’s taken a hit,” Youngs said.
She republished the column, which changed the URL and therefore broke the link in the poster’s QR code. The column can be read at www.allotsego.com/news-from-the-noteworthy-oneonta-must-find-a-way-forward-for-all.
In response to the poster and the link to the August column, Drnek said that “an objective reading of the text will provide a different understanding of my intention, which was to provide a level of understanding and even empathy for those who feel like Oneonta has become a ‘dumping ground.’”
“I was acknowledging their very real concern, not echoing it, and calling for action,” he said.