Members of the public, some of them unhoused, last week urged the Ulster County Legislature to support a proposed local law designating affordable housing as a public purpose and vital county function.
Katrina Houser moved to Kingston with her mother as a young girl in 1974 and has lived there ever since. She said she’s been homeless since February after her building was sold to investors who wanted to turn it into a short-term vacation rental.
“The court system didn’t help us,” Houser said. “Me and my roommate, who is 80 and had four heart attacks, are homeless and there’s nowhere to put us…My mother, who has been in her house for 17 years, as of Friday will be homeless. I have to leave Kingston, a place that I love because I have nowhere else to go here. And nobody’s doing anything about it. And it’s sad. I’m a lifelong resident with nowhere to go.”
Houser was joined by over 20 other people from across the county who are hoping legislators will vote in favor of the law at their next meeting on Tuesday, April 18. County Executive Jen Metzger has already indicated that she will sign the bill into law.
The law would be the latest in local efforts to combat a housing crisis sweeping across the county, which has seen the short-term rental boom through websites like AirBnb turn some of the area’s housing stock from apartments into hotel alternatives for vacationers. Saugerties resident Brittany Barnard spoke about the trend in her community.
“The Village of Saugerties has over 80 AirBnb units that sit empty most of the time while people are forced out of town,” Barnard said. “It can’t keep going on like this. We shouldn’t have anyone sleeping on the streets. We shouldn’t have anyone turned away from (Ulster County) DSS (Department of Social Services) and left stranded.”
But short-term rentals are only part of the problem. According to the county’s 2021 Housing Plan, a mean wage earner has to work at least 67 hours per week to no longer be considered “rent burdened” by having to spend at least one-third of their income on housing costs. With existing rents rising faster than salaries, many local renters are feeling the pinch.
Pat Pellicano, community liaison and Youth Crew supervisor at the Kingston YMCA Farm Project, said he and his partner both have jobs where they make a “normal amount of money,” but are still unable to find an affordable place to live together. He added that the housing crisis hurts everyone.
“As other speakers have said, housing is connected to so many other things,” said Pellicano. “When you’re evicted, it is violence. Gentrification is violence. We’re trying to mitigate that by using all the tools that we have at our disposal.”
Educator Daniel Carmel expressed particular concern about what the housing crisis is doing to the county’s children.
“Students are at the forefront of this housing crisis,” he said. “I hear it all the time from their mouths. I cannot tell you how desperately frustrating it is to get kids to understand the nuances of Mongol culture when they are worried about their parents being evicted…Housing is absolutely a human right. The fact that a single child in this county is struggling should be enough for us to take this initiative.”
Saugerties resident John Schoonmaker, a co-chair of the Mid-Hudson Democratic Socialists of America and member of Citizen Action’s statewide housing coalition agreed.
“Housing is a human right,” Schoonmaker said. “That is the mindset we must have if we were to address the ongoing housing crisis in Ulster County. Every person deserves a roof over their head no exceptions. Members of our community are being put out into the street because some landlord is seeking a higher profit by jacking up the rent or turning it into a short-term rental. It’s time for this to stop. We can never rely on private developers to solve this crisis, it is one of their own making meant to squeeze as much out of the working class as possible. It is time for a county government to step in and do something before communities are torn apart.”
Alexandria Wojcik, deputy mayor of the Village of New Paltz, recently experienced a housing issue herself and said she feels for local employees and students who have been priced out of the community.
“People are driving over an hour to a job in Mohonk or SUNY New Paltz, or to one of our many taverns and eateries, driving over an hour to get to class as a college student, all because of local rents being too high and conditions being terrible,” Wojcik said.
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