man & nature # 220 ~ creative thinking
Tuesday, August 25, 2009 at 10:45AM 
Asgaard Farm ~ Au Sable Forks, NY • click to embiggenAs I have mentioned previously there is a regulatory body here in the Adirondacks - The Adirondack Park Agency, commonly referred to as simply the APA - that fills the classic role of "whipping boy" for not only many Park residents but also many business leaders / elected officials as well.
It would take a month of Sundays to list all of the accusations and epithets that have leveled at the agency but chief amongst them are the ever-popular; government intrusion into the lives of little people at the behest of and for the benefit of the "down-state elitists" (this one is over a century old); ruining the local economy by discouraging development; limiting access to state land; limiting land owner rights; and killing people because of their strict guidelines regarding cellphone towers.
Now let me state right up front that I am an APA advocate. That is not to say that I think the agency is "perfect" or that I agree with every decision it makes regarding land use (both public and private), but it is to say that, without question, if land use decisions were left up to the free market and the "little people", this place would be a mess.
A case in point - many local business leaders / elected officials are calling for the need for local economic development (duh?) because so many locals, especially the young, are being driven out by the lack of good jobs. The APA is almost always named as culprit number one responsible for this lack of local economic development.
The common cry is that if the APA would just get off the backs of honest and hardworking individuals (regulation, "bad" - free market, "good"), everything would be just fine. However, as those who are living life with two eyes open in these current economic times know, that idea can and very often does go horribly awry.
But that said, few, if any, local business leaders / elected officials can point to any specific ideas regarding what type of economic development is even possible in an area like the Adirondack Park. Simply stated, just by nature of its natural topography alone, it's a fact of business life that the largest wilderness area in the eastern US is not a very hospitable place for industrial development on anything but a very small scale.
Sure enough, there are a smattering of small manufacturing and high-tech businesses within the Park boundaries, but they are the exception, not the rule, to what is primarily a tourism / service based economy. To my knowledge, the APA has never prevented or discouraged such businesses from locating / operating within the "blueline" (the boundaries of the Park).
At one time, many years ago, the timber and mining industries provided a large number of Park residents with decent jobs /income. But those days are gone, not because of APA regulation, but because national / international consolidation in those industries has decreed that it is not profitable to harvest timber and mine on those lands that they still own in the Adirondacks.
All of that said, here's the issue that is the elephant in the room that no local business leaders / elected officials ever talk about. The issue that is first and foremost with hindering economic development and driving locals out - the increasing lack of affordable housing within the Park.
Sure enough, some business leaders / elected officials give lip-service to the need for affordable housing but the thing that never gets mentioned - IMO because the reality is in direct conflict with their just-let-the-free-market-work mentality - is that there is so little affordable housing because the free-market has driven the price of housing within the Park out of the reach of working class families.
The soaring cost of real estate is the result of the market demand for both second/vacation homes and that for retirement homes (for those of means). Some locals have decided to fuel this demand by cashing in their investment (sell their house). Some have actually been forced to sell their home because with soaring property values comes soaring property assessments and soaring property taxes.
The consequences of this situation are twofold - one way or another working class families can not afford the cost of living within the blueline, and, with the loss of the working class, businesses that might like to locate within the blueline have a problem with the fact that there is no working class (and how does a business recruit the working class when there is a lack of affordable housing?).
Some would blame the APA for the lack of affordable housing because hamlets, villages, and towns are not able to "grow" beyond their current boundaries - they are surrounded by "forever wild" state land, as protected by the state constitution and regulated as such by the APA. However, on this point, the APA is just simply doing the job it was created to do - maintaining the protection of the forest preserve by protecting the public and private resources of the Park through the exercise of the powers and duties provided by law.
That said, the APA is doing its job based upon the State Land Master Plan, which was signed into law in 1972, followed by the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan in 1973. But here's the thing, according to the APA - "both plans are periodically revised to reflect the changes and current trends and conditions of the Park."
It would seem to me that that notion could allow for some expansion of hamlet, village, and town boundaries specifically for addressing the need for affordable housing for full-time, working class family residents.
In order to assure that land was used for that purpose and for no other use (and to protect that use for future generations), notions such as community land trusts have to be considered and implemented as part of a master plan. Unfortunately, such ideas as community land trusts are meet with skepticism and outright derision by most free marketers. You know the mantra - socialism, communism, government power grabs, and so on, ad nauseum.
IMO, most (not all) local business leaders / elected officials (many of whom are business leaders), who give only lip-service to the idea of economic development and affordable housing under the guise of benefiting the local working class families, are looking out for themselves and their economic welfare first and foremost. It is the same as it ever was.
And, please, if you choose to comment on this topic, any and all references to tinkle-down economics will be summarily dismissed and deleted.
Reader Comments (5)
You've probably already thought of this, but there's a fairly large flaw in your plan for housing-specific expansion into protected land. Where does it stop? The "small expansion" of today will result (maybe) in a small drop in housing prices. As soon as that land's been sold off, prices will begin to rise again.
A better plan (he said humbly), but one that would most likely never fly (people being people) would be to mandate a ceiling on property values. That way, people who want to live in the park could. People who want to invest in the park (i.e. in land for future sale) wouldn't. And the park would remain the park.
Definitely not a "free market" solution, but, then again, not even Adam Smith was a believer in the free market. He just described how it could work, under ideal conditions. He then went on to describe why it never does and why, therefore, it needs to be regulated.
Actually, there are numerous hamlets throughout the Adirondacks, where the APA exercises no restrictions, except setbacks for water. Affordable housing could be placed on the edge of hamlets, without impinging on the wilderness.
One of the reasons I moved to Oregan was due to their land management philosophy. It's been under attack during the run up to the real estate implosion. Not so much now though.
J
The photo reflects the commentary very well.
This could also be a letter to the editor of your local paper.
I like to think of representative government as requiring a large number of morons, or it wouldn't be, representative. Too bad, I kinda like the whole notion of somebody looking at my food, water, air; and the current economic debacle owes much to the government "haters". In my area, in the UP, we have the fine example of unregulation; big lumber "mowed" a white pine forest, now known as the Kingston Plains; stumps, weeds, some grasses, and some jack pines about ten feet tall, 100 years after the fact.
Nice pictures of Asgaard Farm; I did not know it was Rockwell Kent's.