Kingston and Ulster County are in a serious bind when it comes to housing, with prospects of a solution increasingly out of reach. To be more specific, the construction of new housing is in deep trouble. Recent news sensationally illustrates what everyone here feels – in 2024 Kingston ranked as having the fastest-growing housing costs in the nation. For many, our town has become too expensive to live. We continue to witness local officials and activists focus almost exclusively on legislative solutions to roll back property rights rather than support specific plans to build more housing. And because of proposals to drastically expand government control over private property, it’s discouraging new private sector housing investments.

The latest legislative attempt, called the REST Act, sponsored and championed by our own Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, would further erode the control and ownership of private land and owner rights, all in the name of helping the vulnerable. Under the proposed REST Act, if you or your family has a single apartment you rent out for a little extra income, it may become rent-controlled, with byzantine rules and rent caps. It would also extend to any apartments in structures 15 years or older, dramatically expanding eligible properties and setting a kind of “doomsday clock” for any new building construction.

Under the REST Act, rent control may be enacted with far more discretion by persuadable politicians rather than determined by statistics and facts. The tragedy of legislation like this is that it is having the opposite effect than intended – fewer affordable housing options, not more. Trends now indicate that small local landlords in Kingston are increasingly selling out. We are seeing small-time landlords with a multifamily home or a house with a small efficiency apartment selling to new, wealthier residents. The buildings get gutted, and restored into single-family units and taken off the rental market. We are also seeing these homes being sold to much larger and more distant landlords, shifting the landlord-tenant relationship away from community-based to corporate-based.

As Ulster County and the City of Kingston’s Common Council regularly discuss and promote legislative solutions to control the housing sector, property owners and developers are becoming increasingly alarmed. It’s not just the new rules and debated solutions that make developers wary of our area. Hostility towards the private sector, now pervasive in our local politics, is dissuading developers from doing business in Ulster County. I’m sure some will cheer this, but it’s creating a city and county totally dependent upon government funding sources for new housing development. Now, it’s common for local government officials to say “why should we help for-profit businesses?” This is an actual recent quote from a top local government official. Indeed, why should local government help business with things like economic development and housing? Maybe it’s because the private sector creates new jobs and income, adds local tax revenue and builds badly needed housing.

According to county planners, there is a huge number of housing units planned for construction in Ulster. For the last year the number heard is 2,500 units of housing “in the pipeline.” Many of those have been on the books for years and years and years, with almost no chance of being built. Almost all of them face huge headwinds, and a large portion of those are dependent upon public subsidies. Many of those are now in jeopardy due to the defunding actions taking place in the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Our community’s leaders have put almost all its eggs in one basket — government-subsidized housing solutions — and now many of these may never materialize, or won’t happen for many years.

Why has Kingston and Ulster County become so dependent upon subsidized housing, and not also encouraging (or at least not discouraging) private-sector development for market-rate middle-class housing? I often hear from local housing market apologists that the crunch is “happening everywhere.” But this isn’t exactly true — many states embarked upon rapid housing development, such as Texas, Utah and Pennsylvania. Even in our state, some cities like White Plains and Yonkers have built quite a bit over the last several years — much faster than here. Entire skyscrapers are planned and built faster in Manhattan than a project like the Kingstonian.

Why is Ulster County so sclerotic when it comes to construction? We have heard the reasons many times before: powerful local anti-development forces with direct lines to local government leaders; projects strategically slowed down using planning, zoning and environmental tactics; litigation by deep-pocketed citizen groups; and widespread NIMBYism cynically inflamed by special interests. Add on top of this the high cost of doing business in New York — it’s one of the most expensive states to build. On a case-by-case level, many of us may agree with opponents or share their concerns about a housing proposal. But it’s the cumulative effect that has now become too painful to ignore now: Kingston and much of Ulster’s housing has become wildly too expensive for locals, and something’s got to give.

One suggestion I propose is that our local governments, as a matter of course, begin to include and listen to representatives from the private development sector in any discussions about housing. With all due respect, I don’t mean RUPCO since their business model is dependent upon government funding sources. Too often we witness instinctive resistance and hostility to even the notion of someone with development experience sitting on a planning board, housing task force or involved in policy discussions. But by excluding such voices, we are limiting ourselves and spinning our wheels without the foreknowledge private developers can bring based on their experience and expertise. If such voices were involved in prior housing discussions, our area would likely have seen far more of those proposed 2,500 housing units built, instead of them being just another application sitting on a shelf in a binder.

Raleigh Green is a local business owner specializing in marketing communications consulting and services. If you enjoy this column, please "like" it on social media and share online. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer; they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Kingston Wire Editorial Team.