First, let me remind you of the functions and intentions of the Short Term Rental Law. The law makes it legal for a full-time resident of Hudson to operate short term rentals on the site of their full-time residence. That is the function. The intention is to prevent investors, near or far, from removing housing from the market, and to keep as much housing as possible functioning as housing for full-time residency, or to a much lesser extent as second homes, rather than as lodging for tourists or visitors. The intention of that is to maintain the City as a diverse socioeconomic habitation that supports the lives of its residents with as many connected and engaged community members as possible. The law, again, makes it legal for a full-time resident of Hudson to operate short term rentals on the site of their full-time residence.
Throughout my life I have chosen to make less money than I could have made if I had made other choices. I am a writer and until recently have been the editor and publisher of an independent nonprofit press whose aim is to publish the writing that the market will not support. I have chosen throughout my life thus far not to pursue professions or opportunities for high earning, though I have had opportunities to do so, at almost every turn. Instead I have chosen to spend very little money, compared to many. My ethos for living is neatly summed up by an old adage: “Live Simply That Others May Simply Live.” I will stitch a sampler over the long winter. I think many would do well to meditate on the promise of this concept. It is an equanimous way of saying something that I have often fantasized of painting, rudely, over the entry to my home on Union Street—LUXURY IS FOR LOSERS—so that wedding parties dragging their baggage over the sidewalk would see it and wonder “who is the gloomy crank living her mysterious life behind this super cute adorable brick façade?”
As a landlord behind this brick façade I have had many decisions to make. The first decision I made when I had an apartment to rent was that I would rent it to a member of the community whose presence was important to the wellbeing of residents. I am happy to say that I have been able to do that, and am doing that still, and have for a number of years maintained the rent at well below market, which is as most of you realize, inflated far beyond what Hudson’s annual median income of approximately $39,000 can support. I maintain it this way, to be clear, through my practice of not spending much money. In my earlier, more energetic ideations of community potential, I had thought to organize a group of landlords who would similarly commit to maintaining rents at below-market levels, simply because it is the right thing to do if you want to maintain a city that is not simply, well, disgusting. (Here is where things get personal. For me personally the City of Hudson runs the risk of being not only economically oppressive and dismally corrupted by monocultural colonialist visitations, but also simply in poor taste. Shopping shopping shopping hotel hotel hotel bougie bougie bougie bullshit. So uncool. The power to maintain or even restore coolness rests squarely in the hands of landlords. Coolness is subjective but it is also an interpersonal fluid that flows within and between any bodies, including the civic body. It seems possible to me that what we are suffering as a culture overall and definitely within the city limits is the demise of a moral imperative to “be cool” or to “stay cool.” The morality of coolness including the above adage which precludes an efflorescence of high-end lifestyle stores. Landlords, rise up and commit to renting to tenants who will keep the City cool.)
Another decision I made, in 2019, was to run for office. I decided that if elected I would devote myself to the potentials of the role and do it as though it were a full-time job, which is what I did, for two years, basically full-time. The City is, as many of you already understand, deeply understaffed, and elected officials with few exceptions are compensated negligibly. I was able to do this because of my modest, stable editorial salary.
While in office I was able to collaborate daily with many others in various important corners of the City and to effect some positive change. The pandemic, with its radical restriction of movement, created a vacuum in which I could maintain a seemingly constant presence in zoom meetings. The City now has a professional urban planner working full-time on issues around development in general and the brutal housing crisis in particular. The HCDPA is no longer a dormant and largely non-functional agency but instead is administering a large grant and forming a Housing Fund that will continue to bring greater stability to the residential life of community members. The IDA has several important initiatives to fulfill: One) to create a robust and Hudson-specific workforce training program so that community benefits developers promise to bring in exchange for the tax breaks they pretend to require in the form of PILOTS (this is not a system special to the Galvan Foundation but one that virtually all developers will use) can have a direct application and be quantitatively and qualitatively monitored, and so that Hudson residents can reap the economic benefit promised but not so far delivered by the trickle-down emptiness of false promise; 2) to create a standard rubric of equity criteria the City applies to its decisions about how and how much tax abatement various developers will receive; 3) to maintain a full board of community members. Currently there is at least one member who does not participate in meetings yet votes in every decision.
Perhaps what I just described seems dull and impenetrable to you. That is too bad. What this City most needs is more participation from any of the smart, capable, competent, experienced people who are living here. There are empty seats. There are meetings happening every week at which important decisions are made that affect the lives of residents in deep ways, and they are public meetings, and there is no public there to participate. The illusion that democratic government means you elect someone and then your job is done is what is at the heart of current massive failures of democracy. You elect someone and then you come to a meeting when you can, and you offer your ideas and your energy to make things the way they ought to be, and engage with initiatives that you wish to see come to pass. And if you don’t see anyone you want to elect, you try to find someone better and support their candidacy. Or run yourself.
I had planned to be in office for two years and then to take some time for myself to write some books, and I am following through with that plan. A friend has gone out of town for several months and I am house-sitting for them, and during that time I decided to sublet my own apartment, and that is the listing which is now on the MLS. Until I found a subletter—now accomplished—I decided to list it on Airbnb. See above for why there is nothing morally or ethically contradictory about this activity. My decision to rent it at the exorbitant prices you may have seen is a decision I made based on my sense that overall my effect on the City has been beneficial for residents, and that I feel okay about what I have done based on the efforts I have made and the changes I have made possible, and that I could use that money to make it possible for myself to spend time writing. I encourage you to similarly assess your own economy of personal and public effort as balanced with your own getting and spending and see how it all shakes out. While my perception, as I cleared out my home to make it appear blank and “perfect” for a tenancy, short or long, was that I was making a brutal surgical intervention on my own personal habitation, and that this experience and perception confirms overall my sense that the financialization of real estate—a pernicious, insidious, and devastating global phenomenon, of which non-owner-occupied short term rentals represent an apex—is a soul-sucking world-killing horror that has led to the destruction for many of a basic human right, that to a home. The privilege I am enjoying has essentially been stolen from the hands of the very Earth. However I have made the personal calculation that to have the time to write, a luxury indeed, is a luxury that I have to some extent earned through what are inarguably my good works. Most importantly I will for the hundredth time explain that owner-occupied short term rentals do not pose a threat to the availability of housing nor to the character of the city, as do non-owner-occupied short term rentals, and that is why the law I helped to pass does not outlaw them.
