At its Tuesday night meeting, the legislature approved Resolution 330, creating a local “Housing Action Fund,” or HAF, by a 19-2 vote. The fund, proposed by Democratic County Executive Jen Metzger earlier this year, will be seeded with $15 million from the county’s roughly $100 million budget surplus. Metzger has proposed that the county dedicate a quarter of its annual occupancy tax revenues to provide long-term resources for the fund.
The move comes as the county, like much of the region, battles a housing crisis. According to the county executive’s office, Ulster County’s vacancy rate in 2021 was just 2 percent, contributing to a rise in home prices and rents. Metzger says the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Ulster County has increased nearly 60 percent over the past 12 years. She says roughly 29 percent of renters are “severely cost burdened,” and the lack of permanent housing options has led to unhoused residents posting longer stays at emergency housing in local hotels.
Speaking before the vote, both activists and residents urged the legislature to approve the resolution. Eli King is a resident of the town of Lloyd.
“I want to reiterate what many of them have said, that this is a way to begin to address the housing crisis," said King. "And also that, as things stand, lifelong Ulster County residents are continually being priced out of their own communities, and there’s really nowhere for anyone to go. Housing is not affordable anywhere. Please get started, thank you.”
So how will it work? Metzger says the HAF will request proposals from affordable housing developers, nonprofits, and individuals on an annual basis, and support a variety of projects including affordable rental units, accessory dwelling units, emergency housing, infrastructure improvements, and the repurposing of existing buildings to create more housing space. Projects must be energy-efficient, meet the county’s climate standards, and serve households making up to 80 percent of the county’s median income — that’s $81,300 for a four-person household, and $56,950 for individuals.
Democratic Legislator Abe Uchitelle of the 5th District in Kingston sponsored the resolution. He called it a good start for bringing multiple stakeholders together to tackle the situation transparently.
“These things are not happening behind closed doors, but we are actually saying, ‘Ulster County is ready to develop affordable housing. We want to partner. We want to create opportunities, and create them in a way that the public has complete access too, in a process that is available to everyone,'" said Uchitelle.
Not everyone on the legislature agrees. Joseph Maloney, a Democrat from the 2nd District in Saugerties, contends the plan essentially throws money at developers, ignoring what he views as some key strategies to address the housing crisis.
“I think we could attack short-term rentals more aggressively; we could make this all about ADUs, we could guarantee school taxes, we could get away from lotteries," said Maloney. "We could put a little dent. Then we could have a conversation about migration.”
Citing reports of unhoused individuals being pushed out of temporary housing in other counties to make space for asylum seekers from New York City, Maloney called the nationwide migrant crisis the “driving force” of the housing shortage. Earlier this year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched a plan to bus asylum seekers upstate, to relieve a strain on city resources.
“We are on a cliff that we will not recover from, literally as a country, possibly, if we don’t start having honest conversations," Maloney stressed. "And to take $3 million in the meantime and subsidize a handful of local developers and out-of-town developers that in large part are gonna do the project anyways – that turns into a lottery, that gets tax PILOTS, takes away from our school districts.”
Democratic District 22 Legislator Kathy Nolan:
“The bringing in of migration as a key factor in our housing crisis — I don’t think there’s any evidence for that. I’d like to see evidence for those kinds of claims, because ‘honest conversations’ — I believe that was the term that we used — begin with data that are shared and can be discussed and agreed are the facts that we’re going to work on...Also, to talk about a lottery for housing spots is, I think, an attempt to denigrate that process. Another name for that could be called fair access.”
Maloney and Republican Legislator Kevin Roberts of the 12th District in Plattekill cast the only no votes as the measure easily passed.
In a statement, County Executive Metzger celebrated the fund’s passage, adding “We have a moral obligation and a fiscal responsibility to act.” Metzger says the next step is to finalize plans for allocating tax revenues to the fund, and to appoint a Housing Policy and Oversight Committee to oversee its administration. She expects the first notice of funding availability to be released early next year.
Also Tuesday, the legislature greenlighted plans to create a Workforce Innovation Center for the Green Economy at iPark87, the site of the former IBM Kingston facility in Ulster. You can watch the whole meeting here.
