Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress (Pattern) recently released “Out of Reach 2024,” a new report that illustrates the steep rise in housing costs over the past year, as surging rents and stagnant wages worsened the strain on tenants throughout the entire region. 

While housing stress is most acute for those who earn the least amount of money in our economy, the latest data shows that even the core of our middle class in the Hudson Valley is now struggling to find an affordable place to live. 

Pattern examined data for the nine-county region it covers, including Sullivan County.

The data shows that our years-long affordability crisis is getting worse in the Hudson Valley. A single worker making average wages cannot afford fair-market rent in any of the nine counties served by Pattern. The gap between tenant wages and fair-market rent grew substantially in every county except one, as rents increased by more than $200 per month in many places over the past year. 

Homeownership also remained out of reach for the majority of our neighbors. An analysis by Pattern found that median-earning households cannot attain enough in mortgages to purchase a median-priced home anywhere in the Hudson Valley. 

The full Out of Reach 2024 report can be found at www.bit.ly/OutOfReach2024.  

Some key conclusions from the report include the following:

Single adults working 40 hours per week on average wages cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in any of the nine counties. Tenants’ wages would need to increase between $2.50 and $31.67 to afford fair-market rents in their respective counties. 

Fair-market rents would need to decline anywhere from $130 to $1,647 per month to make them affordable for a person earning average renter wages across the region.

The gap between wages and rent has gotten larger in every county except Greene. In recent years, rent increases have outpaced wage increases by about double. However, this comparative rate of change increased significantly over the past year. For example, average tenant wages in Dutchess, Orange and Ulster counties remained nearly flat while fair-market rents in those counties increased by approximately 15 percent. 

The outlook also worsened for people seeking a two-bedroom apartment. For households that include two earners making average wages, rent remains unaffordable in Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Ulster counties. 

The majority of households in the Hudson Valley cannot qualify for enough in mortgages to purchase the median-priced home in any of our nine counties. This is true for one-person, two-person and four-person households making median wages in each county. A two-person household falls anywhere from $99,665 (Sullivan) to $280,410 (Rockland) short of qualifying for enough mortgage to buy the typical home in each county. Consequently, the data shows that more middle-class households are leaving the region in search of more affordable options in our neighboring states, or in southern states such as Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina. 

The data in “Out of Reach” indicates that renters and homeowners in the Hudson Valley have little to spend on necessary and discretionary expenses because the cost of housing is gobbling up a large proportion of their incomes. Recent research by Pattern also found that an influx of wealthy households into the region during the pandemic caused very fast gentrification in certain counties, exacerbating the housing stress that already existed. The influx of new wealth pushed up the cost of all types of housing—along with the assessed values of land and homes—making it less viable for low- and moderate-income people to move or buy a home in the region. 

The affordability crisis in housing has also exacerbated a workforce shortage in the Hudson Valley, as working-class families move out of the region and have fewer children. The latest migration data from the Internal Revenue Service showed that the Hudson Valley lost a net of 12,257 people in 2021, the largest net out-migration since 2005. In 2022-2023, there were 47,865 fewer students attending public school in the Hudson Valley than the peak of enrollment in 2003. Data on migration and school enrollment indicate that our workforce in the region is likely to continue shrinking over the next decade, especially as the Baby Boomer generation retires in greater numbers. These challenging trends are connected to, and partially caused by, the forces of stagnant wages and higher housing costs that are underscored in Out of Reach 2024. 

Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress is a nonprofit organization that provides objective research, planning and educational training throughout the region. To learn more about the data above, read the report at www.bit.ly/OutOfReach2024. Learn more at www.pattern-for-progress.org/.