[ad_1]
SARANAC LAKE – An affordable housing shortage is affecting the local health care industry. As local hospitals and biotech businesses struggle to add more workers, industry leaders say housing is a major barrier to hiring, and they’re turning to new and unique ways to attract and retain doctors, nurses, lab workers and researchers.
The housing crisis is not new and is not limited to this area. But here it is affecting all aspects of life, from school enrollment to business manpower shortages. The ability of some local businesses to grow and some families to put down roots in the Adirondacks is making an impact. It is also contributing to a reduction in volunteering and an increase in homelessness.
–
Adirondack Health
–
Many workers in the health care industry — from nurses to physicians — are struggling to find affordable housing in the Tri-Lakes, Adirondack Health Chief Nursing Officer Dave Mader said.
Meder has been an employee of the healthcare network for more than 30 years and has been CNO for about three and a half years.
“Ultrasonographers, nurses, community service workers, nurse’s aides — everyone struggles so much to find reasonable rent in the Tri-Lakes area.” he said.
This struggle has pushed the workers – and the employers – to develop strategies to help each other find places to live. An employee has a spreadsheet that includes information on upcoming housing and rents, Mader said. Most of the information is available online.
“Also,[we]had managers and directors who used their own network of neighbors and friends to try and find suitable housing to get people where they needed to be.” Mader said. “We all learned some new skills, such as writing leases and invoices and arranging new supplier accounts for some people who want to find housing.”
As a longtime employee and Saranac Lake native, Mader said he’s never known finding a place to live.
Especially in the nursing field, there are some workers who commute more than an hour away.
As it struggles to hire more staff, the health care network is supplementing its workforce with travel nurses.
He said that before the outbreak of the corona virus, Mader was hiring traveling nurses. “Very rarely.” They stay employed only for B. “An eight-week or 13-week job.”
“It’s definitely become more common with us since the outbreak started.” He added. Although we still aren’t what I would consider high-travel users.
Long-term care facilities — like Adirondack Health’s managed nursing home, Mercy Living Center in Tupper Lake — use most of the services of traveling nurses, but without a home, access to these services can be difficult.
“I think the price increase has increased.” Mader said. “And the supply of property seems to have decreased. And the quality, frankly. A lot of times people say they can’t find something suitable in their price range.”
Adirondack Health announced Friday that it plans to close the emergency room at its hospital in Lake Placid, Placid Health and Medical Fitness Center. Part of the reason behind the closures is a shortage of local workers and the high cost of hiring workers through third-party staffing services. Aaron Kramer, president and CEO of Adirondack Health, said there is a housing crisis in the area “It creates another barrier to hiring in our primary service area.” In Lake Placid as well as Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake.
“It’s not the only challenge, but it’s the biggest challenge.” he wrote in an email on Friday.
A modest decline in the unemployment rate has indirectly affected the health of the Adirondacks, Mader said.
Each spring, Adirondack Health hosts recruitment events where you can meet with recent nursing graduates to see if they want to intern or work in a healthcare network.
“We’ve had a little more trouble this year.” Mader said. “We always have more applicants than we have positions available. … This year, we had fewer applicants than we have positions available, so we will continue to hire for those positions.”
What Mader hopes to eventually see in the Tri-Lakes area is more affordable housing options.
Mader even proposed to build a complex, affordable “People like nurses and teachers and firefighters and people like that — middle-class workers who want to live in the area, who have lived in the area for a long time (and) want to move to the area.”
Access to child care services for working parents in the Tri-Lakes area adds an extra layer of struggle, Mader said. Women make up 40 percent of the workforce in health care, education and social services.
“We have a lot of nurses who travel more than an hour away to work here — Brasher Falls, Canton, across from Potsdam, St. Regis Falls, Malone.” Mader said. “In the last year and a half, I’ve had three nurses who had to work closer to where the daycare was, just to get to their child so that they didn’t have to wait an hour and a half each way.
–
Bionic
–
The lack of housing is affecting not only the health care field, but also bio-technology.
Amy Parekh, Biotech’s director of human resources, said the Saranac Lake-based company is expanding as the biotech industry continues to grow. Bionic is looking to significantly increase its current workforce of 43, but it can’t hire those new workers without a place to live.
“We hope to grow and expand, but unfortunately, we can’t do that without affordable housing.” She said.
In the next few weeks, six people starting from Bionic will all struggle to find housing, she said. A hire could begin in June, but they still haven’t found a home. Even domestic workers are having trouble finding a place to live, Parekh said.
She said some applicants turned down jobs because of housing problems and found jobs elsewhere instead.
Last year, Bionic CEO Gladys Zamparo said the company was growing between 10% and 20% three years ago.
In the year As of December 2021, Bionic had 39 employees with three open positions, plans to hire 50 by the end of 2023, and lofty goals for further expansion after that.
“Then the sky’s the limit.” Zamparo said in 2021.
Parekh said they are lucky to be in an industry that has grown during the coronavirus pandemic. But now they want to expand and grow the jobs they offer in Saranac Lake, and they’re struggling to do so because of housing.
Parekh, the company In Saranac Lake, where it was founded in 1990 by Daniel and Judith Lundin, they say they feel the values ​​that support a small town.
“We don’t want to go anywhere.” She said.
Bionic is a testing laboratory that specializes in protecting drugs from bacteria. It was acquired by a Japanese chemical company last year with the intention of expanding its global reach by growing domestically.
That growth is still happening, but more “Measured” More than they want, Parekh said.
Parekh says Bionic will pay well on the middle income of the area. The biotech field offers well-paying jobs with a stable career path, she said. But even these attractive jobs do not offer enough to keep up with the prices that investors are willing to pay for the property.
“Everything has become Airbnb.” Parekh said.
She blames short-term vacation rentals and second homes. She said she understands they are good investments but believes their growth is hurting the growth of the rest of society.
Parekh said Bionic is negotiating with STR owners to lease out STR properties on long-term leases to their employees as they look for permanent housing. But paying the nightly rate for STR is much more expensive and unaffordable than the monthly rate of a one-year lease.
She said the company has changed its hiring process to allow people to start working remotely and take some time off before moving here because of the housing shortage.
With inflation, home ownership is now out of the question for some workers, she said.
Parekh wants local leaders to look for a better way “Tiny Houses” in the area. She said building complex small houses would be more affordable than renting and would be a good investment for people growing up.
–
Trudeau Institute
–
Saranac Lake’s Trudeau Institute, a biomedical research facility built around the study of infectious diseases, isn’t being impacted by the lack of affordable housing in areas like Adirondack Health or Bionique.
The Trudeau Institute has on-campus housing for staff, according to Elizabeth Cain, the institute’s director of strategic operations.
“I’ve only been here for two months, but I’m sure we’re good for our employees and new hires because we have housing on campus.” she wrote in an email last month.
Although she said not all workers need the housing, it’s there for those who do.
———
(Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing series on the affordable housing crisis and its impact on the Tri-Lakes area. In future editions, The Enterprise will examine the state of Adirondack housing. What the market, local organizations and individuals are doing to address the crisis. and more.Readers who want to share their stories about how the housing crisis has affected them can contact the organization’s newsroom at news@adirondackdailyenterprise.com.)
[ad_2]
Source link
