New County Initiative Designed to Break-down Barriers to Housing Development

Written by Bond Brungard for Ulster Strong

KINGSTON – Living in Ulster County over the decades has for many meant enjoying its natural beauty and its many interesting communities. It has also meant dealing with at times an uneasy housing market.

Many factors, manmade and natural, have exacerbated housing anxiety since Sept. 11, 2001 when it changed the lives of many living here. The summer before the World Trade Center was reduced to rubble, houses in towns like Rosendale were priced affordably below $100,000. After the terrorist attack they quickly rose toward $150,000.

Many renters at the time, with various types of mortgages, scrambled to find anything affordable as waves of fear from New York City upset the local housing status quo. 

Over time homes were found, children were born, and families were formed. And these families had equity in their lives, with children ready for college. Then the COVID pandemic arrived and the swift migration from New York City jolted Kingston and Ulster County into one of the hottest housing markets in the nation three years ago. The change has left many out of reach of home ownership as home prices and rents soared.

“It’s not a new problem, it’s a problem of a magnitude we haven’t seen,” said Dennis Doyle, director of Ulster County’s planning department, of the county’s housing issues during the last few decades. “We have been found, and we are not going to be lost.”

 In response, Ulster County government has launched a Housing Smart Communities Initiative, which includes a housing sites inventory component that helps towns identify vacant lots or areas prime for redevelopment for residential housing. 

Included in the inventory are an analysis of the zoning, infrastructure, public services and facilities in relation to these potential suitable sites for development. The inventory, by pre-identifying suitable parcels, helps developers when submitting responses to Request for Concepts (RFC) or Request for Proposals (RFP). They have a clearer idea where residential development is suitable in those communities.  The Housing Smart Communities Initiative has funds to help municipalities through the inventory process by providing on-call housing consultants. 

 “The benefit to developers would be that you, through this process, have support and buy in from the town and the community that could help design and vet the concepts proposed by developers,” said Kai Lord-Farmer, the senior planner for Ulster County.  “This buy-in translates into projects that are supported by the community, versus being opposed and stalled by opposition.”

 Many Ulster towns are getting their Housing Smart Communities committees together, including the Town of Rochester, which is expected within a few months to form its committee. “The Town of Rochester has requested help for the housing sites inventory action and we are helping them with that,” Lord-Farmer.

 Participation in the Housing Smart Communities Initiative is voluntary, but communities that do participate are awarded points for conducting housing inventories.

 “What we are trying to do is provide an understanding of how difficult times are,” said Doyle, “but you don’t have to do this.”

Gateway meetings with town planning boards, applicants, and the county planning department will be set up to resolve any snags in the development process.