ELIZABETHTOWN — Ben Breckenridge is the new community development director at Adirondack Roots, where he will combine his sustainable business and real estate expertise to help alleviate housing issues in the region he was raised in.
Adirondack Roots is an Elizabethtown-based housing nonprofit that serves multiple counties in the Adirondacks. It’s part of a national network of community development and affordable housing organizations called NeighborWorks. The organization helps residents access funds from various state housing programs, as well as other state and local resources.
A native of Essex and graduate of Willsboro Central School, Breckenridge attended St. Lawrence University to study environmental studies and sociology. During this time, he became very familiar with the breadth of the Adirondack Park as he routinely drove between Essex and Canton. He’s a bonafide Adirondacker, with only about 10 more of the 46 High Peaks to complete.
“Living up here — it’s a very different speed and pace of life,” Breckenridge said.
After completing his undergraduate degree, he moved to California to earn his MBA, drawn to a strong sustainable business program at Cal Poly Humboldt. After graduation, he stayed on the West Coast for a while and worked as a financial advisor, also dabbling in real estate and environmental consulting.
Then he was, quite literally, smoked out.
“In 2020, I lived next to a million-acre wildfire. The next year was a half-million-acre wildfire, and the third year it was a quarter-million-acre wildfire,” Breckenridge said.
He started to take regular trips back to the Adirondacks to hike, since the wildfires made it nearly impossible to enjoy outdoor activities in California. He would drive across the country with his dogs in a truck, camping on the way in a rooftop tent. As the pandemic continued, Breckenridge saw the real estate market start to shift in the Adirondacks and he decided it was time to go home.
Witnessing an affordability crisis
Having lived on the West Coast, Breckenridge knows that the Adriondack Park Agency and the unique land use code in the Adirondacks pose both challenges and opportunities. He said it’s important to provide opportunities for the people who call the Adirondacks home.
“That’s kind of the contract that we’ve always had in New York state, is we never had a lot of economic development up here,” Breckenridge said. “Because so much of our land is tax exempt and it’s protected, which provides ecosystem services and is incredibly valuable to the rest of New York State, and then also for us as a tourism economy.”
But as the differences between the Adirondacks he grew up in and the Adirondacks he was investing in as a licensed real estate agent became more pronounced, he saw the flip-side to that situation. With little industry and few high-paying jobs, the influx of high-earning remote workers and investors buying second homes left little for the Adriondack residents.
Breckenridge uses Saranac Lake as an illustration. He said that in places where you used to be able to buy a decent home for $100,000, the prices have doubled, tripled or quadrupled. and the homes at the lower end of the price range often need a lot of fixing up.
“For a local person to come up with the money to do a $400,000 house at 7% interest — the math just doesn’t pencil, quite frankly. and that same affordability issue then starts to push out into other communities,” Breckenridge said. “That price compression has really altered the fundamental reality of the market, and in the process, it’s locked out a lot of people who wouldn’t be able to get into the market.”
Resources for a changing landscape
Breckenridge first came across Adirondack Roots projects in his real estate work and was drawn to the “exciting” work he saw them doing.
“I’m always looking for something cool and unique,” Breckenridge said.
As community development director, his primary goal is to keep people in their homes through a number of programs that fall under the category of housing rehabilitation. Adirondack Roots has a number of resources and opportunities for both current homeowners and prospective homebuyers, the availability of which hinges on what kind of funding is available at any given time.
Their funding comes from a variety of sources. These include “block grants” that are made up of federal funds filtered down through the state, as well as affordable housing programs that also come from the state. Application forms for the programs run through Adirondack Roots can be found at https://tinyurl.com/5d76u5ms.
There’s a program that replaces out-of-date mobile homes with new, energy-efficient models at “little or no cost.” There’s also a program for new home buyers who need renovations on their houses. In the process, they also provide testing for lead-based paint and asbestos.
“A lot of our housing stock is usable, but it’s also not up to modern code at this point — it’s, you know, 50 or 70 years old,” Breckenridge said.
The RESTORE program is a state initiative that helps provide elderly homeowners with emergency repairs or code violations — things like roof leaks or foundation issues.
“Access to Home” is another state program that helps people with disabilities stay in their homes through needed upgrades or renovations. For example, Breckenridge said they are currently working on an accessible bathroom renovation. He said they particularly want to raise awareness about the programs that serve the elderly and those with disabilities.
“It’s something that I think is really, really valuable,” Breckenridge said. “And also it gives people the freedom and dignity that they really deserve to have.”
After having been in his role at Adirondack Roots for a little over a month, Breckenridge is excited to continue learning and having more “tools in the toolkit” to help Adirondack residents, tools he didn’t even have as a real estate agent. He said it’s essential to save the housing stock that currently exists and protect people living in those homes.
“We don’t do a good enough job in our society of taking care of the elderly,” Breckenridge said. “But I think it’s a real disservice to not be able to help people in their need.”