With the housing emergency in Kingston monotonously dragging on since at least 2019, it’s maddening to think that here in 2023, the only ones who can do anything about it, the housing developers and landlords, have effectively been sidelined.
Eager to solve the problem and make an honest dollar doing it, onerous environmental regulations, city residents with personal agendas, and even state-funded entities like the rent guidelines board, have all cluttered the path forward with nonsensical pronouncements.
Case in point: the time wasted by residents opposing the 168 unit apartment complex at Golden Hill and the 131 unit mixed use housing covenant that is the Kingstonian.
If their opponents had expended as much energy as they did dickering over taxpayer-underwritten parking garages and acting sentimental over the old asphalt of a short street in the Stockade District, much needed production of new housing stock could already be well underway. Obviously they don’t care about the homeless.
And that’s where things stood even last month, progress held hostage by atavistic extremists.
But then came an unlikely hero, a retired actuary tables analyst, one Benjamin Holly, and the movement he created which has since been embraced to cut through the Gordian stupidity of it all.
“I was looking for a biography about Daniel Craig,” says Holly. “You know he lives in Rhinebeck? Well, I don’t trust him and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.”
Retelling his search through a lending library for a biography of the actor, it was another dark, blue book jacket which caught his eye instead. The book was titled ‘What is Property?’ and was written by Pierre-Joseph Proudhoun in the year 1840.
“It was written a long time ago by some frog, pardon my french,” said Holly. “I can’t pronounce the last name with any authority, so I call him Prudie. Well, I thumbed through it. And according to Prudie, property is theft!”
This foreigner’s idea as Holly recalls, got him firing on three cylinders down the road to enlightenment.
“Well I thought, ‘I don’t think so. This is America! Just look at all the creeks and brooks here, all the ponds. By Jesus, it’s what Woody Guthrie was talking about! This land is made for you and me!’”
So was born “Kingston Sleeps Under the Stars”, Holly’s housing crisis brainchild which finally came to fruition on Feb 29. Introduced to the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce over a business lunch held up at The Chateau, the idea was enthusiastically adopted and presented to City of Kingston Mayor Highborn who in turn presented a resolution to the common council.
Upon unanimous passage of the resolution 151, alder Bennie Todd-Hilcrest praised the mayor’s negotiation with the Chamber of Commerce as a completely transparent and open process.
But alder Micaela Cierva seemed blasé after the vote. “I don’t know why anyone would be surprised,” said Cierva. “Transparency is Mayor Brent Highborn’s middle name.”
Certainly Benjamin Holly didn’t seem surprised.
“See, I’m a reader,” notes Holly. “Sometimes we can’t control nothing but our perspective. And like Seneca says we’re often just the dog dragged behind the chariot. And look, winter is over, spring is here, the air is warming up! So it’s time for a reset in our thinking.”
According to Holly, starting after Easter, the renters of Kingston, those with apartments and those without, should sleep out under the stars along the river as a sort of citywide demonstration of solidarity.. And there’s a financial incentive too.
“See, the Hudson Valley is a tourist destination. The infusion of wealth that tourists bring to the Hudson Valley is roaring down the mountain, and by getting out of the way, and opening up the currently occupied rental housing stock, that’s how you get at that money. Not by jobs in manufacturing, I can tell you that. We don’t want factories and pollution. We want our landscape as pristine as a virgin daughter. Leave no trace is my motto.”
The Ulster County Chamber of Commerce has proactively released a pamphlet, which refers to participants in the Under The Stars movement as “stayers” and sets out to instruct them on the basics. How to choose your plot of soil for maximum drainage, how to construct shelters out of driftwood and how to start campfires. It even provides information on how to plant crops.
“Of course, even the parcels of land along the waterfront are owned outright,” notes UC Chamber of Commerce president Bard Sodd, “but there’s a gala planned at the Hutton Brickyards, a themed costumed party on Good Friday, where prospective “stayers”, who should come dressed as serfs, can mingle with the property owners who will be dressed up like landed gentry. We thought it would be a fun throwback for attendees to easily be able to differentiate the property owners from the stayers, while looking to make their match.”
Surveyors from the planning department are even now marking of plots of land corresponding to the renting population of Kingston.
“We’re going to need 5, 148 lots to accommodate those coming from the rental properties,” says Planning Director Marianne Saymill, “Which is an enormous number. Luckily those staying out under the stars will leave most of their belongings in their apartments, anything that shouldn’t get wet like furniture or possessions that require electricity. In turn, that will create a more authentic experience for those tourists visiting our city.
Furnished short term rentals are ideal for those visiting the city and the tagline is “Live Like a Local!”
“Think about it,” says Holly. “By serving food, slinging drinks, making beds for families to sleep in on their vacations, guiding tours and hikes, residents here make a killing. And since the renters aren’t in their apartments, they’re not paying for electricity or gas! So this way, residents save money! For showering and washing dishes, the river water is free, as much as they can use! ”
Holly’s emphasis on environmental sustainability has attracted the partnership of two locally run, volunteer staffed, state subsidized, carbon net zero non-profits dedicated to promoting a more fair, just and equitable society.
Both the Wrong Word Made Right Consortium (WWMRC) and Conformity becomes Unanimity (CbU) have come on board.
“Of course we want everyone to be as equal as they can be,” says Bowan Daltry, director of CbU. “And while everyone is equal under the stars, admittedly nature isn’t perfect and some of the ‘stayers’ will be taller than others, some will be younger. Some will stronger. Some will be more clever. Some better with their hands. So we might as well use what nature has given us.”
Julie Kilrist, community organizer for WWMRC agrees it’s the best way to even the odds.
“The first week, Equality week, will be dedicated to getting to know your neighbors out there by the river and see who is best suited for which kind of employment in this new exciting, totally equitable service economy. The stronger ones can do the farming, the personable ones can serve the drinks and take orders. Color and gender obviously have nothing to do with it. Enthusiasm and ideological purity go a long way towards evening the odds we’ve developed. Everyone should see that relying on distinctions you can see or measure scientifically are faulty data based on an outmoded patriarchal ableist view of existence.”
Holly for one feels blessed to have been the catalyst for change.
“It really makes perfect sense. All the information that is coming out now, how the air inside apartments are really not good for long term habitation. Especially the exposure to gas cooking ranges, which is the only way to cook, really. But children should be outdoors where they’re happier. It’s healthy to get your hands in the soil and grow your own food. The land is a bounty, you plant the seed and watch the crops grow up. Human and vegetable.
In order to more closely reflect the authentic experience of the indigenous peoples who came before us and knew how to survive the winters, the directing board of Under the Stars is also tinkering with the idea of an easily reproducible Yert, to support a year round outdoors lifestyle dedicated to total equality.
“I have nothing but respect for the wisdom indigenous peoples around the world have to teach us,” says Holly, “and in fact we’ve gained some interest by Billionaire activist investor Warren Salad Bar. So that could get us through the first few years.”
Adopting this year round model would also free up the housing stock during the cold months of the year, making the arrangement incredibly productive.
To that end the City of Kingston has hired consultants from Coral Gables, who Mayor Highborn says really are the experts at this sort of old world, pre-continent living.
Incredibly, there are a few hold outs to the idea, standing once again in the way of progress, threatening that come May that they will refuse to leave their apartments to live along side their fellow human beings under the stars as a show of socioeconomic solidarity.
To help these malcontents correct their misunderstanding of this fantastic opportunity, visits have been scheduled from compassionate community police officers who will go door to door, down the list to all the rental properties in Kingston to spread the good news.
“It’s unfortunate that a few selfish renters who aren’t cognizant of the effects of their actions could besmirch the whole experiment of mindful coexistence with each other, here in Kingston,” says Lieutenant Tchopshopp. “But I think we’ll be able to get through to them.”
But for them, Holly says, this bustling riverside municipality could inspire the rest of the sate on a bright new direction to take forward out of this housing crisis.
Holly has this message for them:
“Read the constitution. As it says in the third paragraph of the declaration of independence:
‘The Equal right of all men to use the land is as clear as their equal right to breathe in the air. It is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence, for we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world and others no right.’
“It says it all right there. If these troublemakers want to carry on this nonsense, we’ll see what the Interstate Commerce Clause has to say about it,” says Holly. “We’ll see them in court.”
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