Few would argue there”™s a need for affordable housing, but few groups succeed and actually place keys in hands.
One group that has had notable success, however, is the Rural Ulster Preservation Company, RUPCO, a private, not-for-profit company with an array of housing successes in its portfolio. And yet, says the executive director, much more needs to be done because people deserve decent housing and to spark economic activity, including job creation and revitalization of main streets and business districts.
“Supporting people, creating homes, improving communities,” said Kevin O”™Connor, the executive director of RUPCO, addressing a dinner meeting of the Southern Ulster Chamber of Commerce at the Would Restaurant in Highland. He was referencing the organization”™s credo, but cited examples of RUPCO successes that gave the words weight beyond mere sloganeering and showed the non-profit organization has a dynamic business sensibility.
RUPCO was created in 1981. Though it has created affordable housing projects in Kingston, Ellenville, Rosendale and elsewhere, the group does more than just build affordable housing, including restoration of historic structures to create commercial and residential space. It also has programs to assist first-time homebuyers and new programs to assist people who are having trouble meeting their mortgage payments. O”™Connor noted, however, that none of the people RUPCO has assisted into home ownership are having trouble with their mortgages. The group also does community development projects along main thoroughfares in Kingston and towns throughout Ulster County.
O”™Connor addressed the need for a work force for the future, but lamented that decades of discussion about an affordable housing shortage have yielded little in the way housing for entry-level workers. Though several projects for affordable senior housing have been approved in the county, there are few initiatives for affordable family housing.
O”™Connor said a study of affordable housing in Orange, Dutchess and Ulster counties released earlier this year showing a total gap of 16,000 affordable units, a shortfall projected to grow by another 6,000 units by year 2020.
O”™Connor said one reason for the shortfall is easy to pinpoint: People are suspicious of affordable housing and citizen have the means to delay and even kill any such project. “Unfortunately, in New York we are a strong home rule state,” he said. “I say unfortunately because we have grown too parochial in our approach.”
He cited the 53-unit Woodstock Commons affordable housing project, now in its fourth year of planning review, even though the site chosen for the project was identified in the town”™s comprehensive plan as the best place for affordable housing. The project has been in the discussion and planning phase for six years overall.           Â
Another RUPCO project, the now-finished Stuyvesant Park Heights senior housing in Rosendale, was an eight-year process.
Such time frames essentially kill off any chances that a private developer would consider building work force housing, but without somewhere to live, the region”™s young families must move elsewhere, even if they could find a job.
“Do we build to the trend, or build to buck the trend?” asked O”™Connor, saying the question comes from Ulster County Planning Department Director Dennis Doyle and refers to the aging population of the area. O”™Connor said the area must build to buck the trend; that is, create housing young workers and families can afford to own, thus laying groundwork for young people to remain in the area and for companies to bring jobs here.
And, not incidentally, he noted, the hammer-and-nails aspect of housing creates a lot of jobs.
