GUILDERLAND — The Guilderland Industrial Development Agency has begun to flesh out a policy for how it will deal with housing projects seeking financial help from the town. 

Specifically, the agency is working to define what constitutes workforce housing. Decisions on whether a project gets built, how big it is, or what it looks like are issues for Guilderland’s town, planning, and zoning boards.

For projects proposing to include workforce housing — there is currently one proposal before the town seeking approval, Foundry Square — the IDA’s role in the process would be financial. 

While affordable housing is defined by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development as housing where the occupant pays no more than 30 percent of gross income for housing costs, including utilities, workforce housing lacks a standardized definition.

State law does not explicitly name housing as a project type eligible for financial aid from IDAs, whose original intent was to boost business, create jobs, and prevent economic stagnation by supporting industrial and commercial endeavors like factories and research labs. 

But New York, via a state comptroller’s 1985 opinion, suggests that multi-family housing could be considered a “commercial project” eligible for IDA benefits if it demonstrably creates jobs or prevents economic deterioration.

The interpretation has become accepted among a number of IDAs across the state, Guilderland’s IDA was told by its own attorney last month.

But, the board was told, state oversight bodies, like the Authorities Budget Office, are increasingly emphasizing the need for solid justification beyond simply constructing apartments. An IDA must prove that a housing project meets the legal definition; fits its mission; and complies with clear agency policies, including a specific one for general workforce housing, something the Guilderland IDA currently lacks.

Last month, the board tasked its attorney, Christopher Canada, to come up with some examples of other IDA policies on housing. 

This month, Canada returned with policies from Dutchess, Suffolk, and Onondaga counties for the board to examine. The board members drew particular insight from Onondaga’s policy since it has a specific definition for workforce housing. 

According to the Onondaga IDA’s Uniform Tax Exemption Policy, “workforce housing” requires a specified percentage of units, at least 10 to 15 percent per its PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) exemption scale, to meet specific affordability criteria, with rent rates set at 80 percent of the Area Median Income, and resident income levels not to exceed 120 percent of the Area Median Income. 

Canada said HUD data shows the Albany Metropolitan Statistical Area — which includes Albany, Columbia, Greene, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, and Schoharie counties — has a median family income of approximately $116,000, while Census Bureau data pulled by IDA Chief Executive Officer Donald Csaposs shows, for Albany County alone, the median household income is about $83,150.

Csaposs then highlighted the issue of using either figure.

Using the HUD affordability index of setting aside 30 percent of income for housing costs, Csaposs said rent for a median-household income of about $80,000 would be $2,000 per month while 120 percent of the median would be about $130,000, for which rent would be about $3,300 per month.

These figures would be too expensive for a number of municipal employees, whose starting salaries are:

— $44,000 per year for an emergency medical technician;  

— $38,000 per year for a clerical position in the town hall; 

— About $40,000 annually for a laborer in the highway, water, and parks departments; and

— $56,000 per year for a teacher with the Guilderland Central School District.

“My concern with some of these other UTEPs [Uniform Tax Exemption Policies] is that I find them too confining,” Csaposs said. “I don’t think our decisions should be based on a rigid, ‘if-then’ sequence, like mathematical tautologies.”

Csaposs told board members they need “the flexibility to take a more comprehensive, global look at a project’s total impact on the community, including any additional beneficial steps the applicant proposes.”

Csaposs went on, “Everything I’ve read about workforce housing suggests these are precisely the individuals we aim to benefit. So, if market rent is $2,000 and these are the prevailing local salaries — and I intend to expand this research with state and private-sector salary data — we must ask: Who are we truly helping, and how?”

He continued, “I would hate for us to be constrained by an overly rigid policy. Instead, I hope we can formulate a broad statement on how this IDA will approach providing assistance for so-called workforce housing.”

Csaposs then brought the conversation around to Guilderland’s updating of its two-decades-old land-use plan. 

“This brings us back to the fundamental questions raised when the town initiated the Comprehensive Plan update,” he said “The question was: Where will our young people live? How can we house them? There was a lot of talk about smaller, single-family houses and homeownership. But for young people today, burdened with student-loan debt and other responsibilities, that’s often unrealistic. Let’s be practical.”

Csaposs said, “The reality is that most of our lower-salary employees working for the town of Guilderland do not live in the town of Guilderland because they can’t afford to. Our large highway department road crew, for example, mostly lives outside the town due to cost. The same applies to many in our parks department.

“If we are going to dispense taxpayer funds, they would be better spent trying to address this affordability gap, if we’re able. This may be an intractable problem, I don’t know, but I’m hoping for a robust discussion at this level and effective solutions, because our community deserves it.”

The board then decided it would let Csaposs and Canada research the issue some more before coming up with a policy for the Guilderland IDA.