MONTICELLO – Earlier this month at a special meeting of the Planning and Community Resources Committee of the Sullivan County Legislature, Adam Bosch and Eric Pierson of Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress presented on housing in the county. In the presentation, the pair explained the benefits of establishing a Housing Trust Fund (HTF) and the next steps to making it possible. 

Bosch recalled that last year, Pattern for Progress had responded to a Request for Proposal (RFP) that the county put out for a variety of services related to housing. 

“This was coming off the housing needs assessment  and the housing strategy that [Consulting and planning group] CZB had done for the county,” Bosch said. “CZB had pointed out the needs while the county had done a great job in measuring those  [needs] and helping educate the public on what the housing needs are.”

Upon responding to the RFP, Bosch said that they have taken some time to work on three main goals for housing in the county. 

“One is to design a Housing Trust Fund for the county,” he said. “Two is to design and deploy an educational campaign on housing which we hope to still do this fall. Then the third item was a little bit more administrative in nature, a report called ‘Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing’, which is a document that you need to submit to HUD [Housing for Development] just to maintain some of the funds that the county gets that can be applied to housing.”

Bosch recalled that they were also at Legislature a few months back to share some of the initial concepts and that a lot of the surrounding counties in the Hudson Valley region are doing a Housing Trust Fund, including Rockland, Ulster, Dutchess and Westchester counties. 

“Those funds are doing a lot of different things,” stated Bosch. “They are helping to rehabilitate existing housing units that are at risk of being lost to dilapidation, they are helping bridge these significant capital gaps that are preventing some development projects from actually getting off the ground and they are helping to cut deeper into that troth of affordability - which is an especially relevant issue here in Sullivan County.”

Bosch stated that Pierson has done a lot of work calling other counties and calling other organizations that design HTFs as well as digging into the original CZB report that was done for Sullivan County. 

“[He is doing that] as a basis for designing a trust fund that is hitting the right notes, the right scale and scope for Sullivan County,” said Bosch. 

Bosch and Pierson then shared with the Legislature and the public a draft design of the HTF. In a housing needs assessment that was done in 2022, it was discovered that the rising cost of housing outpaces wages and first-time ownership is becoming increasingly more difficult. 

“One of the things that it also pointed out that was a little unique to Sullivan County,” Pierson said, “was the substandard and lower quality rental housing that is out there. That influenced part of the direction and design for this housing trust fund.”

Pierson went over the basic HTF process which has five steps. First, there would be an allocation established every year for the HTF. Then the county would release a notice of funding availability (NOFA), which Pierson said would have very specific details of the program, how to apply and the timeline. 

Third, an HTF Committee would be selected by the county and review the applications, then come up with a recommendation for funding that would be submitted to the Legislature. 

“The Legislature ultimately has the final decisions on whether to follow the recommendations of the committee and release the funds,” said Pierson. 

Answering a question from District 7 Legislator Joe Perrello, Pierson noted that there is currently no funding stream for the HTF, but $2 million was budgeted for the project to get off the ground as stated by District 1 Legislator Matt McPhillips. 

Pierson then went into discussing the first two HTF programs that they are proposing, the Rental Rehabilitation Program and the New Construction Program. 

“The Rental Rehab Program will essentially be looking for landlords that are in good standing and provide them with an opportunity to rehab their rental units,” Pierson explained. “In exchange for the rehab funds that the county is giving, the [landlords] will agree to keep the unit rented at an affordable rate at a given amount of time. 

He noted that the New Construction Program will be similar in that they will recommend that the county provide the funding for new construction of affordable units. 

“It’s not expected to be something that nearly comes close to completely funding the new construction projects,” Pierson said. “It’s very expensive to build housing in general, but especially affordable housing if you are going to be renting it at an affordable rate.”

The next step is for the Legislature to do a local law to adopt housing as a county purpose, as it is not a county purpose until adopted as one. During the full board of the Legislature, they unanimously set a public hearing for that Housing Local Law. The public hearing will take place on Thursday, October 10 and is the first step in adopting the local law. 

The next steps following the adoption of the local law are Pattern for Progress submitting the final draft of HTF design and rules and designing an application and scoring rubric. Following that, the Legislature would formally adopt the HTF and then appoint an HTF review committee.