Nearly 40 percent of New York State residents spend more than a quarter of their total income on rent or mortgage payments and utilities. That’s close to 3 million households that meet the definition of “rent burdened,” with 1 in 5 households experiencing a severe cost burden of more than 50% of their income going to pay for housing.
In Oneonta, our members—educators, professionals, and staff—are directly impacted by this state- and nationwide crisis. The local housing market is dominated by lucrative student and baseball tourism-oriented short-term rentals (STR), driving up costs and limiting options for year-round residents.
During the 11-week summer tournament season, these baseball rentals command nightly rates ranging from $195 to $250, or weekly rates between $725 and $1,275. This creates an overwhelming financial incentive for property owners and landlords to shift away from long-term leases. Working professionals seeking year-round housing are left with highly depleted and deteriorating housing stock.
The result? Our members are being priced out of the very community they serve.
About the Housing Committee
The UUP Oneonta Housing Committee is a volunteer committee comprised of rank-and-file members and chapter leadership pursuing research and advocacy around housing. We seek to understand how the local market impacts SUNY Oneonta employees, their families, fellow workers, and the broader Oneonta community, organizing these groups and our members to take action in support of pro-housing legislation and initiatives that reduce burdensome costs affecting tenants and homeowners.
Mission
To use member experiences, housing data, and partnerships with local stakeholders and community organizations to identify and advance practical housing solutions that support our members, local workers, and the greater Oneonta community.
Current Priorities
- Workforce Housing: Understanding how housing affects employee recruitment and retention.
- Housing Research: Collecting and sharing housing data and community perspectives.
- Community Partnerships: Collaboration with local governments, labor organizations, tenants unions, and other community stakeholders.
- Housing Advocacy: Supporting initiatives that promote housing stability and availability.
2024 Housing Survey
Summary of findings:
- Employees prefer to live closer to work
- More than one in four employees surveyed report having to commute more than 20 miles one way to reach their workplace.
- Department chairs and senior faculty members reported that a commute of over an hour each way, on top of heavy academic and administrative demands, has become unbearable. Faculty members frequently commute from larger cities like Albany, Utica, Binghamton, and Syracuse because they cannot find acceptable housing locally.
- This reduces employee involvement in after-hours university life, limits student-faculty interaction, and drains the energy of academic staff. Survey respondents warned that the difficulty of finding non-student, family-friendly rental properties and affordable, move-in-ready homes is driving some prospective employees to decline job offers, and causing existing hires to seek employment elsewhere.
- 83% of the active housing seekers surveyed reported that they would immediately move closer to Oneonta if housing barriers were addressed. This confirms that a massive latent demand exists for local housing among the university workforce, which is currently blocked by market failures.
- More than one in four employees surveyed report having to commute more than 20 miles one way to reach their workplace.
- Housing affordability, availability, and quality is a concern
- 34% of respondents actively searched for housing within a 15-minute radius of Oneonta in the past two years, yet the vast majority were unable to find suitable options.
Current Projects
Workforce Housing Initiative
Status: Active
Goal: Explore housing strategies that help attract and retain employees while strengthening the community.
- Current Activities
- ✅ Connect with SUNY leadership
- ✅ Present to Oneonta Common Council
- ✅ Present to Oneonta Town Short-Term Rental (STR) Committee
- Present to Oneonta Town Board
- Community outreach
- Workforce housing research
- Data collection
Adopt Good Cause Eviction Law
Joint action with Oneonta Tenant movement
Status: Active
- Current Activities
- Public education
- Community engagement
- ⌛Petition outreach – In progress
- Research on local housing impacts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is UUP Oneonta involved in housing advocacy?
Placing working people in an environment that lacks stable, affordable places to live—places that empower them to build wealth, support families, and put down roots—has downstream impacts on employee satisfaction and retention, as well as their ability to sustain the businesses that make up the local economy when students and tourists aren’t around.
Every dollar that workers are forced to spend on commuting costs and exorbitant rents is a dollar that can’t go to paying down debt, saving for things like continuing education, emergencies, or retirement, and building the kind of generational wealth that enables upward mobility.
How are short-term leases and high rents impacting the local economy?
In a healthy, self-reliant local economy, wages earned by university employees and local workers are spent locally, creating a strong “local multiplier effect” where dollars recirculate to support neighborhood shops, services, and public infrastructure.
In Oneonta’s distorted real estate market, this wealth-building cycle is broken. Because a substantial portion of student and weekly summer baseball rentals are owned by out-of-town speculators and absentee landlords, the passive rental income paid by local residents and visitors is immediately siphoned out of Oneonta and redirected to distant investment portfolios. This process of direct wealth extraction deprives Oneonta of vital capital that would otherwise support local commercial growth, retail stability, and small business development.
Furthermore, when absentee owners fail to maintain building codes or pay local municipal registration fees, the administrative costs and code violations accumulate. These unpaid fees are eventually re-levied directly onto local property tax rolls as liens, forcing permanent residents and taxpayers to subsidize the public safety, code enforcement, and neighborhood blight issues left behind by out-of-town profiteers. Year-round families are left with deteriorated neighborhoods and a depleted local tax base, while the real estate wealth generated on Oneonta’s streets is spent elsewhere.
Does the committee advocate for a specific housing policy?
The committee studies housing issues and works with community partners to identify and advocate for any and all practical solutions that alleviate the strain of this particular cost of living.
Can non-UUP members participate?
The committee welcomes conversations and partnerships with community organizations and local stakeholders.
How can I get involved?
Volunteer, attend committee meetings, share your housing experience with us, or participate in housing initiatives. If you would like to reach out to Housing Committee, please email jessie.simpauco@pm.com