Republican Dutchess County Executive Sue Serino says the county will move forward with its original plans to build a homeless shelter at 26 Oakley Street in Poughkeepsie’s north side. She says the site would provide transitional housing and on-site case management for up to 100 people, and replace the PODS at the former Dutchess County Jail, which have served as an emergency shelter since 2020.
But Poughkeepsie doesn’t want the new shelter. Councilmember-at-Large Da’Ron Wilson, a Democrat, says the north side already hosts a lot of social services that discourage growth in a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood.
“The fifth ward has been overburdened by years of discriminatory practices," he tells WAMC. "We are probably one of the only cities that has a jail, a county jail right in the middle of the city, too, in the north side. So how many more things do we have to keep putting into one specific area to keep that same narrative of, ‘This is the negative side of town.’”
The city and county have been butting heads on this for years, and Poughkeepsie Mayor Yvonne Flowers has made finding a compromise a focus of her administration. The conflict comes as homelessness in New York is on the rise. A recent report by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found the number of unhoused individuals in the state more than doubled between 2022 and 2024. Dutchess County says it shelters more than 560 people a night, most of them single adults.
Last year, Dutchess County won a $13 million state grant to build the shelter at Oakley Street. Serino says the award is tied to that specific location, and her requests to transfer it to another site were denied.
Over the past few months, the city and county hammered out an agreement that would have kept the shelter on Oakley Street, but with stipulations. Instead of housing single men and women, as the county wanted, the shelter would have been limited to families and a small number of single women. Wilson says it also would have banned Dutchess County from building any similar facilities in Poughkeepsie for the next 40 years.
"A compromise would have been much better for families and single women at the site," Wilson adds. "Most of the single women and families are living in some of our shelters outside Poughkeepsie, in different locations. So, if we’re able to remove some of these families and single women, then that would open up more spots for the men [at other shelters].”
Flowers signed the agreement in April. Serino says her office was negotiating in good faith, but ultimately, she was told leaders in the Republican-led county legislature would not support the deal. In a statement Wednesday, Serino says, “I had a choice to make: walk away from $13 million or move forward with a facility that could help the most people. I chose the second option, because I believe we can’t keep waiting while people are living without hope, structure, or support.”
County Legislature Chair Will Truitt says he opposed the deal because it didn’t account for single unhoused men, who make up a majority of the county’s homeless population.
“Really, you need one central location where you can provide all the services that are needed for these individuals, whether they are addicted to drugs, they need assistance getting back up on their feet, finding work. We as a county have those services available in the city of Poughkeepsie," Truitt explains. "We voiced our concern that, if we changed the original concept of Oakley Street, that we would now be stuck still with a piecemeal solution where we have to house out homeless individuals all across the county, which we do not believe was the best solution.”
The Poughkeepsie Common Council says it is once again considering legal action, after voting to approve a potential lawsuit last year. The body went into an attorney-client privilege session Tuesday night to discuss its options going forward.
“We will not take this lying down," says Democratic Vice Chair Nathan Shook. "I know we are unanimous in controlling our destiny here in the city of Poughkeepsie.”
The council did not officially vote to take action. As Mayor Flowers is on leave for what the city calls “necessary surgery,” it’s likely any action won’t get her approval until she returns to office later this month. City Administrator Joseph Donat is serving as acting mayor in the meantime.
Serino says project design for the Oakley Street shelter will resume. Once it gets final approval from the county legislature, she says construction will start in the spring of 2026, with an expected opening in summer 2027. The county plans to phase out the use of the PODs over the next two years.
