The housing crisis in Ulster County is acute but sometimes hard to see. We might avert our eyes from the individuals who stand at the head of shopping mall intersections, holding signs that say “Homeless” … or quickly dismiss them as addicts or drifters. We might be secure, long-term homeowners who just don’t know people who spend half of their income on housing costs, whether on rentals or mortgaged homes. We might see headlines about the lack of affordable housing in our community and shrug them off because the problem feels too big to solve.

We can avert, dismiss, and ignore, but the problem won’t go away. YOU might become part of it.

You might be the widowed senior who must downsize but can’t begin to afford a decent one-bedroom apartment. Where will you go?

You might be the parent who dreams of a close-knit family but watches as your adult children must live far away, much farther than you’d like, in order to find a job that makes housing affordable.

You might be that young adult who would like to live and work in — or at least near — the community of your family and friends but cannot. You might be working in Ulster County but have to commute from 25 miles away to a job that barely pays the rent.

The housing crisis isn’t abstract, isn’t selective in whom it affects. All of us are feeling its impacts. Did you hear about the house down the block and the price it fetched? Outrageous! Lucky homeowners! ... but where will they go now, what can they afford with their nest egg? And who bought their house? City residents who paid cash for their second home in lovely Ulster County? A great weekend getaway. Investors who scheme to set up an Airbnb?

What are the consequences for a town or village that becomes largely populated with well-to-do, part-time residents and absent landlords? What changes will follow in lifestyle, the economy, government, schools, civic life?

The Ulster County Housing Action Plan offers many statistics that highlight and confirm the extent of the crisis across the county. We need to understand the human costs behind the numbers.

What are the answers to the problem? The first, most obvious, is that we must have additional affordable housing to address our residents’ needs and to stabilize communities.

The path to getting more affordable housing will raise uncomfortable questions for the comfortable. What are our values? What are we willing to change? To give up? What are the tradeoffs? What is the common good and how can individual dreams mesh with it? Our community needs to take a hard, hard look at these questions, now: press our leaders to act and support them when they do.

Tom Denton

Highland