Low Income Housing in Saratoga County

Normally, when a city or town is gentrified, it is expected that low income and cheap housing become less available as the property values of houses increase with the value of the towns themselves. This is why it is interesting to see a general increase in cheap, owner-occupied housing in Saratoga County, New York.

Saratoga Springs has been a wealthy town that hosts wealthy tourists for a very long time, and now it’s also sporting many signs of gentrification. There are hip new businesses coming in, and some new shopping centers and apartment buildings have been opened recently.

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So if the value of Saratoga Springs is going up, why, according to data from the 1990 census and 2015 American Community Survey (ACS), is cheap housing also on the rise?

Percentage of Owner-Occupied Housing Valued at $20,000 or Less in 1990

Percentage of Owner-Occupied Housing Valued $20,000 or Less in 2015

As you can see from these two maps, the percentage of low-income housing has gone up over the past 25 years. How is this possible?

If we look closely, we can see that the census tracts in the city of Saratoga Springs have not changed much in terms of low-income housing availability. However, the surrounding census tracts see greater increases in cheap housing. This is indicative of the housing market in Saratoga Springs. It shows that people can no longer afford to live there.

When the housing market changes so much that people already living in Saratoga Springs can no longer afford it, they can move into the poorer surrounding counties and live there more cost-efficiently. This is why we see a rise in cheap housing around the city more than in it–the poor are leaving Saratoga Springs.

More research is needed to determine the full nature and scale of this effect, and the data from the two surveys used is not enough to claim statistical significance yet, but it’s enough to show that Saratoga Springs may well be facing a serious issue with rising housing costs forcing residents out of their homes and into greater Saratoga County.

Maps made with Social Explorer.