Pattern for Progress and The Center for Housing Solutions were happy to present our annual housing conference on October 14 at SUNY New Paltz to a sold-out audience.

This year, our guests  shared information and actionable tools that communities of every size in the Hudson Valley can use to support evidence-based housing strategies.

Opening Session:

Pattern for Progress will present the initial data findings from its new research on corporate housing ownership and consolidation in the Mid-Hudson region. The project – the first of its kind anywhere in New York – will unearth and quantify trends of housing corporatization and the increasing prevalence of short-term rentals to better assess impacts of these trends on housing affordability and access. Pattern will share hotspots of investor-owned housing (1-4 family homes) that have been found in the region, and some of the first comprehensive data on the total quantity of short-term rentals in five of our counties. The full report will be finished by the end of 2025. Pattern earned a national grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support this unique and important research project.

Breakout Session 1:

Bridging the Capital Gap  – Significant capital gaps continue to hinder the development of many projects throughout the Hudson Valley. Two developers will present their capital stacks to show how they bridged these gaps, and two funding organizations will provide information about little-known sources of capital that are available to support projects.

Speakers: 

Andrew Germansky, senior vice president at Westhab, will share the diverse capital sources that his nonprofit stitched together to fund one of their affordable housing projects in Westchester and Rockland counties.

Jan Jaffe, of Wellington Blueberry, will share the details behind one of the region’s most promising and complex rural housing projects. Jaffee and a group of community members are putting together the partnership and capital to restore a historic building in the Catskill Mountains hamlet of Pine Hill to include 10 housing units, a cafe, and a small grocery. Jaffe will share the capital sources they are using to bring much-needed housing to the most rural part of our region.

Soham Dhesi, senior investment officer at Leviticus Fund, will share information about lesser-known sources of capital that are available to help fund housing projects throughout the Hudson Valley.

Erik Forman is the Director of Housing Policy at the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, a 40-year-old impact investment fund that creates and preserve affordable and workforce housing through union construction jobs. Erik will talk about how projects can be affordable and pay competitive wages. Erik will share how the fund works and how it could bolster projects in our region.

Community Funding for Housing – Several governments in the Hudson Valley have set up local funds to support housing with infusions of capital. These governments will share how their funds were established and structured, and the projects they have funded thus far.

Speakers:

Blanca Lopez is the commissioner of planning for Westchester County. Lopez will explain the funds that her county is using to support housing development. This includes the county’s New Home Land Acquisition Fund, which assists with the acquisition of property that will be used to develop new affordable housing. It is the only county-level land acquisition fund for housing in the region.

Andrea Menjivar is the community development project supervisor for the Town of Southold, Long Island. Southold is one of only four towns in the State of New York that has been authorized to have a Community Housing Fund, which collects funds from a real estate transfer tax to build and preserve housing, support downpayment assistance, and fund other housing actions. Andrea will share how Southold is managing its housing fund, and the investments being made by the town.

Kai Lord-Farmer is the housing planning for Ulster County. He will share information about the Ulster County Housing Action Fund, a trust fund that was established with a dedicated revenue source to provide capital annually to projects that develop and preserve housing. The fund has already made one round of awards and will announce a second round later this year.

Kate de la Garza (she/they) is the Executive Director of Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services Inc. (INHS), a Community Development Financing Institute (CDFI) located in Ithaca, NY, where she leads 52 employees and manages a $5.2 million operating budget across six counties in Central New York. Kate will share her experience as a recipient of funds from a Housing Trust Fund, and offer insights for our region to learn from as Hudson Valley leaders build funds on county and local levels.

Breakout Session 2:

Tradeoffs in Rural Housing: Affordability, Sustainability, Design, and Scalability – Speakers will talk about efforts to meet the housing needs in our rural areas, the balance between housing and conservation, and affordable design and construction practices to produce housing in the rural parts of the Hudson Valley.

Speakers: 

Steve Rosenberg is the co-convener of the Hudson Valley Alliance for Housing and Conservation (HVAHC), a partnership between eight nonprofit housing developers and eight nonprofit land trusts. This unique collaboration is helping the region understand that health communities need both an ample supply of affordable housing and protected land that supports food production, clean water, climate resilience, and outdoor access. Rosenberg will talk about HVAHC’s efforts to help rural communities integrate their planning for housing and conservation.

Christos Athanasiou is the co-founder and managing partner at miniMAX, a company that designs panelized and prefabricated energy efficient homes and accessory dwelling units. Christos will talk about his work building throughout the Hudson Valley and beyond, the challenges of achieving affordability and sustainability simultaneously, and how municipal governments can support the scale of housing creation our rural communities need.

Jules Farr (they/them) is the Director of Growing Homes at Glynwood, an initiative to expand housing affordability and access for farmworkers in the Hudson Valley. With a background in land conservation, agriculture, farmworker justice and housing, Jules will share about their current efforts to develop a scalable housing prototype that will ensure farmworkers can continue to live, work, and thrive in the region.

Utilizing Greyfields and Brownfields for Housing Development – Planners and developers will share examples of projects that have been built through adaptive re-use, or on brownfield sites. They will discuss the zoning and planning that is necessary to support these projects, the financing, elements of public outreach, and other tools that communities can use to remediate the environment, redevelop vacant buildings, and build housing at the same time.

Speakers: 

Adam Bosch is the president & CEO at Pattern for Progress. Bosch will share some of the tactics, policies, and planning steps involved in developing housing at greyfield and brownfield sites, including some of the use cases at old industrial sites, closed schools, churches, and other sites in the Hudson Valley. Bosch will also share how communities can get started on adaptive reuse through zoning, incentives, and taking an active government role.

Sean Kearney is vice president of Kearney Realty & Development Group. Kearney will share information about adaptive re-use projects that his group has completed, including the most important steps that can make defunct properties available and attractive to be reused for community benefit.

Closing Session:

Spotlight on the RFEI Process – Some of the best projects in the Hudson Valley are being constructed as a result of the RFEI process, short for “Request for Expressions of Interest.” Through this process, local governments are making municipally owned property available for the construction of housing, and they are gathering competitive proposals from developers to maximize the public benefit. Such projects have been completed or started in Kingston, Hudson, Pelham, Croton, Peekskill, New Rochelle, New City, Haverstraw, Middletown, and elsewhere. A panel of three communities will join us to explain how they obtained land control and public input, how they crafted their RFEIs, the projects they are getting in return, and how they intend to pursue more projects on municipally owned property.

Speakers: 

Bartek Starodaj is the director of housing initiatives in the City of Kingston. Starodaj will share how Kingston has used the RFEI process to attract housing, commercial space, and public realm improvements in key locations throughout the city. He will also discuss how Kingston is aggressively pursuing actions to acquire more properties that it can advertise for the development of projects that meet community needs and policy goals.

Chance Mullen is the mayor of the Village of Pelham and executive director of the Housing Action Council. Mullen will share how Pelham offered four properties – a parking garage, police station, fire station, and village hall – to a developer in exchange for 127 units of housing, 6,000 square feet of commercial space, and a new municipal center. The $77 million project is more than half finished.

Vivian McKenzie is the mayor of the City of Peekskill. McKenzie will share how Peekskill has used planning, public input, and the RFEI process to successfully choose development proposals for several parcels that are within the city’s waterfront district and near its train station. These parcels include parking lots, a fleet repair shop, and a highway garage, all of which the city plans to transform into a vibrant mixed-use district with housing and placemaking elements.

Thank you to our event sponsors