Albany County moves forward with revised public hearing language designating affordable housing a public purpose

Albany County supervisors approved revised language and set a public hearing on proposed local law G for 2025, which would designate the development of affordable housing as a governmental and public purpose.

A sponsor explained that recent edits remove references to grants and instead define “support services” to clarify that the proposal is intended to provide services to developers to increase affordable-housing supply rather than to distribute direct grants. "After the commentary in both the public hearing and in the last committee meeting, I felt that the support services definition was a clearer and better way of analyzing what it is we were trying to do because we wanted to get away from the concept of this being free money being handed out as opposed to a service being provided for the developers to increase the supply to affordable housing," the sponsor said.

The amendments highlighted in the meeting record include changes to the definition of support, removal of section 4(b)(4), deletion of the word “grant” where it previously appeared, and substitution of the support-services language in Section D. Board members voted in favor of the revisions and carried the motion to proceed with the hearing process.

The transcript records no final enactment of the law at this meeting; the action was to accept revisions and set the next step in the public hearing process.