Last September, the town of Ulster Building Department conducted an inspection at the Kingston Motel. The results were rough: roaches, bedbugs, mold, broken light bulbs. More than 50 rooms were flagged in the inspection report.
The town of Ulster gave the motel 30 days to clean things up, and when the inspectors came back, the motel passed inspection.
But when I visited earlier this week - almost a year later - guests told me it’s still not a comfortable place to stay.
"I wake up this morning, there wasn't no water," said Keith Francis. He's been staying at the Kingston Motel for two and a half years, and says the water gets turned off a couple times a week. When I met him, he was sitting next to his neighbor – Maritka Veach. She’s been there three years.
"You gotta buy a lot of bottled water," said Veach. "It's very expensive. You can't drink the water. People have actually went to the hospital and gotten sick. It's not really safe."
"I ran through seven cases of water in one week," added Francis. "I have seven kids that I look after. So they go through a lot of water."
To be clear, those aren’t all Keith’s kids. He just helps take care of them. At night, he cooks them dinner in the microwave, because the rooms don’t have kitchens.
It’s one of the small ways people at the Kingston Motel look out for each other. As I was talking to Francis and Veach, I noticed that someone had written the name “Aubriella” on the wall of the motel. I asked if they knew who that was.
"It’s my daughter!" exclaimed Veach. "When we brought her home, everybody else wrote it for our welcome home thing. And it's kinda just stayed there for two years."
Like a lot of other guests at the Kingston Motel, Francis and Veach were placed there by the Ulster County Department of Social Services. State policy dictates that the county has to help people who become homeless find emergency housing. Motels are one of the places many people in that position end up. The county and the state pay the motel to cover the cost of the room, and the unhoused person gets assigned a caseworker.
Part of the caseworker’s job is to help them transition back to permanent housing. But with housing costs exploding in Ulster County, finding permanent housing for low-income residents has become almost impossible. Emergency placement locations like the Kingston Motel are supposed to be temporary. But in cases like Francis and Veach's, the emergency ends up stretching on for years.
When I first arrived at the Kingston Motel, Town of Ulster police chief Kyle Berardi showed me around. There were piles of clothes, weight sets, strollers, lamps, and furniture clustered around the exterior of many of the rooms. "As you can see, a lot of their personal property is left out underneath the overhangs, because of there's no room in the in the room itself," said Berardi.
The motel, he said, can be dangerous. He ticked through a list of the calls he gets on a regular basis. "Domestic abuse, domestic violence, assaults, fights in progress, CPS referrals, all kinds of things." The day after I visited, the entire police force was called to the motel to break up a fight between 20 people.
Francis and Veach told me they feel safe at the motel – mostly.
"I don't bother nobody, so I'm good," said Francis.
Veach nodded. "I guess if you stay out the mix, you're okay. But, I mean...there is a lot of stuff that happens here on the daily. It’s a lot of drugs sometimes."
"You stay by yourself," Francis said, chuckling, "you stay out of trouble."
Last week, citing the safety concerns and the ongoing maintenance issues, the Ulster Town Council voted unanimously on a resolution calling on the county to stop emergency placements at the Kingston Motel. One of the council members, Laura Hartmann, also joined my visit to the motel. She told me the goal of the resolution is not to strip people of their housing. "I really want to highlight the the lack of affordable low-income housing in the area," she said. "This situation really exemplifies it and shines a spotlight on what the issue is."
Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger agrees. "We just...we don't have a lot of options," she told me in an interview after my visit. Motels, she added, are an imperfect solution to a much larger problem. "You know, a lot of the issues are just issues of people living in a building that is meant for, like overnight stays, or a week stay. Motels are not constructed to be permanent residences."
With median housing prices in Ulster County approaching half a million dollars, and rents climbing alongside them, Metzger says there’s only one way to keep people from ending up in situations like the Kingston Motel. "The only permanent solution to the placement of families in motels, and to the housing crisis generally, is to build more affordable housing. And the county is fully committed to that – we are investing millions of dollars in that. But you know, we can throw as much money at it as we want. Unless the local communities, who have land use authority – unless they’re supportive of expanding affordable housing opportunity in their community, we’re going to continue to be stuck in this situation of relying on emergency housing." Metzger paused, and sighed. "People just can’t afford to live here now."
I tried to reach the owner of the Kingston Motel several times – he wasn’t there the day I visited. But it’s worth noting that motels aren’t required to take on emergency housing clients from the county. Many refuse. Both Chief Berardi and Metzger described the owner, who’s name is Mukesh, as cooperative and helpful.
But the problems persist. Veach has been trying to move out of the motel for three years. She told me she’s not asking for much. "To finally be in my own apartment with my kids, and actually be able to live normally without having the extra stress of everyone else's stuff going on." She paused, and laughed. "It's been awhile."
