The fate of the former Elizabeth Manor boarding house remains up in the air but one possible future was floated Thursday at a meeting of the Ulster County Housing Development Corporation (UCHDC), the agency whose job is to create affordable housing locally.

As outlined by County Planning Director Dennis Doyle — with the caveat that “we don’t even own the property yet” — what's under consideration is some sort of co-op housing in which residents have ownership of their apartments within a structure managed by RUPCO. The thinking is that, among other things, ownership would foster a stronger commitment to the community — skin in the game.

The former boarding house has stood vacant since a 2020 fire gutted it. Two years later, using $700,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds, it was acquired by the county for emergency housing purposes. But as an estimated $1 million in renovations ballooned to more than $3 million; the county began shopping the property and has now located a potential purchaser in Staatsburg-based Maeda Construction.

What would follow, Doyle told the meeting, would be “the demolition of the building and creating anywhere between 12 to 16 owner occupied units in that space. Twelve is permitted in the zoning statute, 16 would require a waiver from the city planning board, and those would be at an affordability level of 60 percent of AMI. We reached down to 60 percent AMI because when you look at what's happened to area median income in the county, it's gone up 40 percent in the last four years.”

“We'll know more after the legislature either acts to hold a public hearing or it doesn't hold a public hearing,” Doyle continued. “And then once the public hearing is complete whether the legislature will act to actually surplus the property into the UCHD, if that occurs. My sense is that what we should do as a board is what we did with respect to Golden Hill — we would not take title to that property until such time that we had a proposal and financing available, so that we don't hold it for a long period of time, and we're not exposed to the liability and maintenance of that particular building.”

Legislator Joe Maloney (R-Saugerties) questioned the concept, arguing that its dependence on state funding would invoke a legal requirement for a statewide tenants lottery for the resulting housing.

To which Doyle replied: “The short answer is that the City of Kingston has adopted a preference policy that has been declared to be legal by [the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal.” Citing the case of the UCHDC's Golden Hill project where, he said, “Seventy percent of those units have to be offered to Kingston residents.”

Maloney also objected to the loss of school tax revenues that would follow from the exemption of future residents, also along the lines of the Golden Hill project.

No one addressed that question directly but, in a post-meeting conversation with UCHDC board member Legislator John Gavaris (D-Ellenville) pointed out the project's potential to reduce the demand for public services. “Housing insecurity is one of the largest problems that we have, and it exacerbates other problems .. .mental health issues, holding down jobs.”

Citing Comptroller March Gallagher's April 9 report on the county's spending on emergency housing, which has grown from $3.8 million in 2020 to $13.3 million in 2024, a 248 percent increase in just five years, Gavaris said this: "We may be really, really hurting ourselves by spending for emergency housing when we could be diverting that money into actually building housing, and we would save ourselves money at the end of the day.”

The legislature will vote next week on a resolution setting a May 20 public hearing on transfer of the property from the county to the UCHDC, which will then negotiate terms with Maeda.