by Francesca Olsen
Register-Star
June 20, 2009
HUDSON — Controversy surrounding the St. Charles Hotel and the possibility of it becoming a spot for emergency housing continues. With 34 rooms in the hotel and 74 eligible members in the caseload as of June, the issue is becoming more complicated.
According to Social Services Commissioner Paul Mossman, there are 74 homeless residents in the current caseload: one couple without children, 29 single males, eight single women, six single women with children, and four “intact families” — a mother and father and children. Within this group, 21 children are currently housed.
Social Services is currently using 14 motels, including three in Greene County, for emergency housing. With 34 rooms and no option for single males, the hotel may not be used at full capacity.
“We have enough families, single women and single women with children to easily fill the St. Charles,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Art Baer, R-Hillsdale. “As far as I know, there’s no issue on that.” ...
“There’s no figures that can qualify using a landmark hotel as a homeless shelter,” said Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera. “There’s no excuse to use the St. Charles Hotel as a homeless shelter.” ...
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The June 15 Department of Social Services press release announcing the proposed "use of the St. Charles Hotel for emergency housing and satellite office" can be found here.
County looks at St. Charles for homeless shelter
by John Mason
Register-Star
June 16, 2009
COLUMBIA COUNTY - The 139-year-old St. Charles Hotel, 16 Park Place, Hudson, may soon be the home of the homeless in Columbia County. Social Services Commissioner Paul Mossman got approval from the Board of Supervisors' Human Services Committee Monday "to negotiate and prepare a lease agreement with the St. Charles Hotel for Department of Social Services purposes."
These purposes are two, emergency housing and DSS offices. Mossman said he is investigating entering a long-term, seven-year lease with a company interested in purchasing the St. Charles. The arrangement could save the county $400,000 a year, he said.
In a sentiment echoed by other Hudson elected officials, Mayor Rick Scalera criticized the county for "deliberating and negotiating over something that's going to take place in the city without including city officials. It isn't done anywhere."
The resolution passed Monday still has to be approved by the Finance Committee and the full Board of Supervisors.
To deal with the ballooning problem of homelessness in the county, Mossman said, the hotel's second and third floors, with 17 rooms each, would be used for emergency housing for homeless persons. The first floor, with 3,100 square feet, would be dedicated to a Hudson satellite office for DSS.
The owner, Mossman said, would be East Coast Realty, who would buy the hotel from its present owner, provide the hotel rooms to the county, and provide security and a 24/7 desk clerk.
Combining DSS with emergency housing would make its services easily available to a large number of its clientele, and would "minimize planned transportation costs to Ockawamick," Mossman said. The main DSS office is slated to be moved to the former Ockawamick School on Route 217 in Claverack, six miles from Hudson. A bus that would have offered DSS clients free transport, making seven round-trips daily between Hudson and Ockawamick, was projected to cost the county $100,000 a year.
Currently, homeless persons are housed in hotels around the county, which is costly to the county both for the hotel stays and transportation.
The emergency housing on the second and third floors would go first to single-parent families, then two-parent families, then to single women, Mossman said. For safety issues, single males would remain in other hotels.
Mossman stressed that this is a first step in a plan to centralize housing for the homeless. Single males, he said, may at some point be housed in centralized transitional housing providing supportive services such as drug treatment; the Rev. Peter Young of Albany operates such facilities and has spoken to Human Services Committee members about possible sites in the county.
As for the first floor, the commissioner said the satellite office will provide help with emergency housing, applications for temporary assistance, food stamps, Medicaid and employment services.
But 3,100 square feet, he said, isn't room enough for "every service we provide at DSS." So, he said, he has been trying to minimize the need for Hudson residents to travel to Ockawamick. "We took a survey of our high-end user programs, and what are the needs of the families that come through the doors," he said. "If someone has public assistance, their need to come to the building is minimal - once a year." If they're on food stamps, they can phone in or mail their recent information, he said.
The satellite office would also be a document drop-off site for applicants.
"Nothing has been decided or finalized," Mossman said. "This was all based on information gathered over a couple of months. I think it's a win-win as the first stage in a multi-step process."
In addition to saving money, the centralization would also facilitate better supervision of and security for the clients, he said.
"If we let an opportunity like this go by us, I'll be coming back to the Board of Supervisors next year," Mossman said, "saying homelessness is up 20 to 30 percent from last year."
The commissioner first unveiled the plan in a power point presentation to an executive session of a joint meeting of the Human Services and Buildings and Facilities committees, in a room packed as well with several supervisors on neither committee. Meanwhile, a large group of county residents, asked to leave the exclusive meeting, waited for more than an hour in the hallway of 401 State St., where Scalera filled them in on what was transpiring.
He noted that if, as Mossman suggested, the satellite office would satisfy 75 percent of Hudson's social services needs, the plan meant more than 20,000 visits to the St. Charles from DSS clients annually.
"You're taking a landmark hotel," he said. "[Baer] is claiming it hasn't been kept up that way."
"It's not that debilitated," said Alderwoman Wanda Pertilla, D-2nd Ward.
"It's another decision behind closed doors," Scalera said.
"DSS is a beast," Pertilla said. "There's no way the St. Charles could hold the process these families go through. These families are anxious, nervous, there's no way this would work."
"Hudson's been left out consistently," said Linda Mussmann.
Scalera said his position has always been that the city would take transitional housing if DSS would stay in the city, but not if it moved to Ockawamick.
"This is the slap in the face I've been biting all weekend," he said.
Joan Steiner said the Claverack Town Board had traded away its right to have a say in the process for "two acres we don't want," referring to the acreage at Ockawamick on which the town could build its town hall within the next decade.
Howard Brandston of Claverack said it doesn't fit with the town's Comprehensive Plan, and Hudson Alderwoman Carole Osterink, D-First Ward, said it also doesn't fit with the county Strategic Plan put together by Baldwin, Bell and Green in 2008.
That study described a lack of hotel rooms in the county as a major limitation to the tourism economy.
"Suddenly, you're going to take a landmark hotel and repurpose it," she said. "It doesn't make sense. Remember that Ken Flood wasn't part of the discussion."
In a press release, Board of Supervisors Chairman Art Baer, R-Hillsdale, praised the plan as both more cost-effective and more secure for the clients than the present situation.
But Brandston said, "Nobody's looking at planning."
Chamber of Commerce President David Colby said county Planning and Economic Development Director Ken Flood "didn't know anything about it."
Flood did not deny this.
"The Board of Supervisors set policy," he said. "I fully support their policies."
He said he's working with the Tourism Board on ways to attract the construction of a full-service hotel.
"The market would demand it be in the Hudson area, whether near the new Hudson park or in the city," he said. As for transitional housing, he said locating it near the services people need, such as grocery stores, medical and social services, and co-locating it near the social services satellite office all seem reasonable, and said, "That's where planning, community involvement and decision-making play a role in the location of transitional housing."
After the executive session, a public meeting of the Human Services Committee was conducted in the supervisors' chambers on the first floor, in which Mossman gave his power point presentation again.
Supervisors William C. Hughes Jr., D-Hudson4, and Ed Cross, D-Hudson2, both chastised Mossman for not including anyone from Hudson in the decision-making process.
Noting that the county has a problem with homeless people taking up hotel rooms, Scalera said, "So, we're taking up 69 hotel rooms in a county starving for hotel rooms, and yet we're taking 34 more hotel rooms. This isn't the answer: We need to get serious about a homeless shelter."
City Treasurer Eileen Halloran asked if there was data about the root cause of homelessness.
"Years ago, there were certain landlords who rented to people on public assistance," said DSS Director of Income Maintenance Lynn Kutski. "They've sold their properties, they're no longer renting them. There's just no affordable housing: Where are you going to get an apartment for $328 a month?"
Later, Hudson elected officials and politicians expressed their outrage.
Pertilla said the decision, made under the radar, was a disservice to her constituents.
"The majority of citizens that frequent Social Services are from my ward," she said. "It's too bad we can't sit down and come to a compromise. It's getting ugly."
"The assumption is they can affront Hudson and it doesn't matter to the rest of the county," said Don Moore, Democratic candidate for Common Council president. "They're looking at this as a piece of the bureaucratic puzzle ... but not at the economic impact on this city and the rest of the county ... I can't believe they adequately reviewed the numbers."
"I'm getting completely fed up with the idea that the county knows best what's best for the city of Hudson," Scalera told the Register-Star. "You cannot take a landmark hotel and turn it into a homeless shelter: It can't and it shouldn't be done. The county has been using hotel rooms for 20 years. Over the course of 20 years, I believe a bell would have gone off, 'Get serious about building a homeless shelter.' Instead, they look at this as a great opportunity, the St. Charles is for sale. This is another one we're going to fight."
Hughes conveyed similar sentiments.
"The county has no right to come in when we in the city are trying to develop our business, through our Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, which will lead to the development of the waterfront, leading into Warren Street," he said. "Having a landmark building right smack dab at the end of the business corridor turned into a homeless shelter is an outrage. This whole thing is a fairy tale: It's almost laughable, if these guys weren't serious."
Hughes said he is not opposed to siting emergency housing in the city.
"We could have sat down and found a suitable location where people could agree to it," he said. "To have it forced down our throats this way is totally unfair."
But Mossman said the plan would be good for all county residents.
"If I can cut the costs of a room rent by 45 to 50 percent, that's a big savings," he said. "Plus being closer to services, and being able to work with individuals and families - it would be more efficient."
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