This week marks the final installment of our Taking Stock of Housing series, with a look back at the high points and a bit of a look forward at what the Adirondack housing issue holds for the future.
Hopefully the park will do a better job of solving the problem over the next 30 years than it has over the past 30 — despite warning calls being voiced back then just as they are today. “…(A)ffordable housing for the middle class is a thing of the past,” wrote Assemblyman Neil Kelleher in a 1992 letter to The North Creek News Enterprise. “A moderately priced home simply can’t be built.”
Keller worried that an economy based on logging and tourism, or “chainsaws and chambermaids,” as he put it, would fail to support the basic necessities of life. Not everyone was so pessimistic. A Town of Jay comprehensive plan drawn up in 1997 felt confident housing construction was adequate to meet housing needs — barring some great upheaval that would send city dwellers scurrying to the wide open wilderness spaces. But what were the odds of that?
Lost and found on the old trail
The old trail was familiar. I walk it monthly. The loop meandering along the state and private land line was only two miles long. It showed some blazes on the trees left by the hunting parties and solo hunters who have hunted this section for generations. Less than a mile in, bordering state land, I walked confidently in an October afternoon because it was a familiar route. I wore a blaze orange vest because it was hunting season. Watching for the faded blazes on the trees was unnecessary. The past footfalls of others were easily followed. Someone had recently walked here. The beech leaves were beautiful this time of the year.
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