Schuyler County Housing Survey is Now Open; Aiming to Address Local Housing Needs

SCHUYLER COUNTY, N.Y. (WENY) -- To address what local officials call a lack of available housing, Schuyler County is conducting a housing study. Residents of the county are encouraged to take the survey that opened on Wednesday.

The Comprehensive Housing Survey and Needs Assessment is led by the Schuyler County Planning Department with help from a federal grant. The grant, totaling $25,000, was given to the county by the Appalachian Regional Commission and funds half of the new study.

With the grant, the county is bringing in Urban Partners, a community consulting firm out of Philadelphia, to collect and analyze data that will ultimately help developers address housing concerns.

The first step in the study is engaging the public with a survey.

"It's really to give us all more of a holistic picture of the work we do here at the county and in the nonprofits to help people in our community and to better understand housing needs," said Joann Lindstrom, the director of the Schuyler County Planning Department.

The survey will collect data about current housing inventory and characteristics, analyze market demands, and identify critical gaps.

Watkins Glen Mayor Laurie DeNardo says she is serving as one of the stakeholders for the project on behalf of the village. One of the topics she says she wishes to hear more about is short-term rentals. This is because the village has previously implemented laws to place a cap on short-term rentals due to large amounts of tourism in the village.

"The tourist industry is really important to us," said Mayor DeNardo. "You know, we bring into the state park 1.4 million visitors a year, which is phenomenal for our community and economic growth. But what we're seeing is that we need people to come who want to live here as well, including attracting teachers to our wonderful schools. And if they don't have places to live, it's a real issue."

Gathering the survey data from residents is just the start. Lindstrom and the Planning Department share that Urban Partners will also conduct interviews with local organizations, developers, realtors, landlords, and more to bring to an in-person housing forum in May.

The date for the forum is still being scheduled.

"It's just always better to get it firsthand from people who live here and I think that there will be a lot of insights," said Lindstrom. "There always is when you send out surveys of you know people's personal opinions or specific situations. I think it's kind of hard to tease out when you know people might be living temporarily with friends or relatives. So we're hoping to get a little bit more of the nuanced data, I think, from the survey."

The survey is open now through the end of April.

Residents looking to fill it out can do so through a link to the online survey which can be found here.

If you would like a physical copy, Lindstrom says you can come in person to the Planning Department at the Schuyler County Courthouse and pick one up.