“We’re frozen in time,” said Guilderland’s supervisor, Peter Barber, at a town board meeting in March.

The board was hearing a report on the federally subsidized housing in town. 

The number of Housing Choice Vouchers was set by a study in 1982, according to James Mastrianni whose business oversees the federal program for the town.

Guilderland has 200 families on a waiting list for government-subsidized housing but has only 95 slots.

“The next person we’re going to reach on the waiting list applied in 2019,” said Mastrianni.

Four years is a long time to wait for affordable housing — too long.

Those people who are waiting aren’t frozen in time; they are struggling each day to try to make ends meet.

The town itself isn’t frozen in time. Guilderland’s demographics have changed in the more than 40 years since the study was done.

As we’ve written on this page before, the percentage of students from poor households in the Guilderland schools had gone up from 5 percent in 2007-08 to 15 percent in 2015 — a three fold increase — and it is not declining.

The proposed school budget for Guilderland next year includes transportation costs for homeless students.

It may be hard to believe there is homelessness in a town where the median family income is over $90,000 but it is here.

A home is essential, not just for children who need to feel secure and safe in order to learn and progress at school and in life, but for anyone.

As the hierarchy outlined by psychologist Abraham Maslow in the 1940s made clear, basic physiological needs — like the food, water, and warmth — followed by safety needs must be met before psychological needs can be answered and self-fulfillment obtained.

A home — secure shelter — is the start, the essential beginning place for all that follows.

We’ve written on this page in support of local charitable initiatives that have helped the homeless and we continue to advocate for those. But we believe our government should do more to provide a social safety net for those in need.

Responding to Supervisor Barber’s comment of being frozen in time with such a limited number of vouchers, Mastrianni said of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, “HUD hasn’t made it available.” He also said, “There’s a lot of demand for this program.”

One of the initial priorities of the Biden administration, Mastrianni said, was to increase the Housing Choice Voucher program. “But that’s stalled now,” he said.

President Joe Biden’s budget proposal had called for $32 billion for the Housing Choice Voucher program, which would have added 200,000 households and been the largest one-year increase in vouchers since the program started in 1974.

On March 9, the White House posted Biden’s current plan for expanding access for affordable rent, which says, “While around 2.3 million low-income households receive rental assistance through the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, another roughly 10 million are eligible and do not receive assistance due to funding limitations and wait lists.”

More than four times the number of people receiving the benefit quality for the benefit. Some of those 10 million eligible people are trying to live in Guilderland.

So we support Biden’s budget proposal. The pandemic exacerbated an already dire situation in our nation that is only growing worse.

In the depth of the pandemic, in August 2020, Liz Hitt, executive director of The Homeless and Travelers Aid Society, said that, between July 2019 and July 2020, “We’ve seen a 47 percent increase in the unsheltered homeless.”

HATAS is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1927 with the mission of ending homelessness within Albany County and the Capital Region.

“Some people simply feel that they would rather be on the street than in a shelter,” said Hitt. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not seeking meals, showers, and other services … It just means they’re sleeping on the street.”

In addition to the pandemic, which is still ongoing, inflation has added to the problem of low-income people finding affordable housing. Rents are increasing more rapidly than they have since 1986.

The payments that have eased some people through the pandemic have run out. One in nine people in Guilderland is food insecure, John McDonnell, director of the Guilderland Food Pantry, told us earlier, and the number has grown during the pandemic in what he called “the perfect storm.”

Prices for food, utilities, and gas are all increasing, McDonnell said. “And we’ve lost all of the COVID monies.” Day-care centers have closed or increased markedly in price, he said. Grown children are moving back in with their parents; grandparents are caring for their grandchildren so parents can work.

The federal government, after two years of providing free lunches for every student, has returned to the original system of providing lunches for families deemed poor. McDonnell says that almost 20 percent of school-age children in Guilderland qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

We were gratified last Thursday that HUD announced $268,337,527 in Continuum of Care Competition Awards for 563 local homeless service and housing programs across New York state. The awards for Albany County, including the city of Albany, total $7,485,327 with the biggest awards, of about $1 million each, going to HATAS and Equinox.

Biden’s proposed budget for next year includes a voucher guarantee for two population groups that the White House says “are acutely vulnerable to homelessness: youth aging out of foster care and extremely low-income veterans.” Between discretionary funding and program reserves, these vouchers — if approved by Congress — would serve over an additional 200,000 households.

We certainly support helping youth no longer in foster care — they are our future and had a rough start in life. We also support the added aid for low-income veterans as 9 percent of homeless adults are veterans, men and women who had their lives shattered in service to our country. We’ll continue to advocate for programs helping veterans.

“Most people are embarrassed. They’ll live in their car or on their friend’s couch,” Christine Rem, a nurse and retired Army colonel, told us. She has set up a home for female veterans in Troy.

“They’re proud,” she said. “They don’t want to say that they’re homeless.” 

And that brings us to a question raised by Guilderland Councilman Jacob Crawford. He asked Mastrianni what the options are for families on the waiting list. And remember it’s a long waiting list.

Those already part of the federal program in Guilderland are largely elderly or disabled. Of the 200 on the waiting list, Mastrianna reported 102 families have been given first preference for living or working within the community. 

He answered Crawford, “They’re either living with families or they’re, you know, living in a severely rent-burdened situation,”

Or, like Colonel Rem’s proud veterans, they are sleeping in their cars or on someone’s couch.

It’s not Mastrianni’s fault; he can only administer the slots available. And charitable initiatives can only help a few families.

But we believe, while our federal safety net is in tatters or anyway frozen in time, there is something our local government can and should do.

We heard it in the words Barber spoke giving his State of the Town address earlier this year. He said then the most important upcoming initiative is updating the town’s comprehensive plan, which was first adopted in 2001. He noted that Governor Kathy Hochul in her State of the State address had emphasized housing growth.

“I think it’s a testament that we want to make sure our town is home to all residents, regardless of income,” said Barber in his February speech. “It should not make a difference whether you’re a doctor or a lawyer, we want to make sure the home-care aids, the laborers, the people who do not have the same income have a welcome home in our town.”

At the March board meeting, Barber said he wanted to make sure that the Comprehensive Plan Update Committee was aware of the situation with the long waiting list and lack of vouchers. Although the committee wouldn’t have control over adding more vouchers, Barber acknowledged, it could “look at other tools to provide affordable housing.”

We believe the town board — elected representatives of the residents of Guilderland — should go beyond making sure the update committee is aware of the waiting list and lack of vouchers.

The town board should direct the committee to make zoning for affordable housing part of the comprehensive-plan update.

We’ve written on this page about young firefighters who cannot afford to live in the place — on their own, out of their parents’ homes — they volunteer to serve, even risking their lives.

According to the latest census data, of the roughly 73,500 current Guilderland residents, only 14 percent are in their twenties and another 12 percent are in their thirties. And, while the median home price in Guilderland is about $275,000 — 20 percent higher than Albany County overall — less than 3 percent of owner-occupied housing units are valued at under $100,000.

A town is indeed richer if it is home to people in a wide variety of occupations and a wide range of ages. Our elected representatives should instruct the committee drafting a plan for our future that this is essential.