Growing Homes was birthed out of the Farmer Housing Working Group. This grassroots effort was formed as a cohort of Hudson Valley farm owners, managers, workers, and service providers dedicated to raising awareness of the farmer housing crisis and advancing solutions. We were supported in 2022 and 2023 by a seed grant from Northeast SARE. ​

 

In 2023, we put together 4 two-hour learning sessions to educate our community and raise awareness about farmer housing. These sessions reached 150 stakeholders and are all available at our website. We also convened 40 stakeholders for a day long conference. ​

 

With the completion of the Farmer Housing Working Group's Northeast SARE grant in early 2024, the project leads pursued additional funding opportunities for the work to continue. This work had two interrelated tracks:

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Track 1: Development pathways

The interdisciplinary problem of farmer housing requires multi-faceted solutions. We offer three development pathways to pursue simultaneously:

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1. A duplex or triplex farm house typology meets the most needs and preferences of farmers we surveyed and seems the most actionable model to build in rural and peri-urban areas in Columbia, Ulster, Dutchess, and Orange Counties where farmers want to live. We anticipate a majority of the solution will come from constructing these units on suitable sites in towns with favorable zoning codes.

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2. Several nonprofit farms are also interested in building housing for their workers, with the possibility of housing farmers from other area businesses. We seek to support these nonprofit farms in their design, permitting, construction, rent-up, and management processes.

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3. We also hope to create regulatory and funding changes that incentivize affordable housing developers to set aside units in larger projects for the agricultural workforce. These projects generally happen closer to large towns or small cities with more robust infrastructure, which would satisfy the needs of some farmers we surveyed.

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We have secured funding and hired a full-time staff person to steward these development pathways. This Farmer Housing Development Specialist position is being incubated at Glynwood Center for Food and Farming.

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Track 2: farmer leadership development through advocacy

The Working Group has raised the profile of farmer housing substantially in a little over a year of work. More can be done.

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By continuing to develop a cohort of farmer leaders, we seek to build and execute local, state, and federal campaigns that increase awareness of and funding for farmer housing in the Hudson Valley and beyond. These campaigns include:

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1. Implementing municipal Community Housing Funds and Community Preservation Funds and directing them to support housing for land stewards,

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2. Augmenting existing state funding for construction of farmer housing, and

 

3. Unlocking preference for agricultural workforce-based housing in state-administered federal funding streams.

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We seek funding to support a part-time organizer to design and implement advocacy trainings for farmer leaders and stipends to pay for those farmer leaders participating in the trainings.