Negative vibes around a 53-unit affordable housing plan hit the home of liberal values and costly real estate, writes PETER APPLEBORNEin Woodstock
IF THEY had decided to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, the issues might have seemed simpler.
Instead, a protracted battle over a 53-unit affordable housing project is dividing this town where mellow 1960s vibes and liberal politics coexist uneasily with real estate prices increasingly out of the reach of the humbler classes.
When workers finally began clearing land for the Woodstock Commons project in July, it looked as if the uncomfortable saga might finally be ending. Instead, new issues kept popping up: the plight of black bears and nesting, endangered Indiana bats threatened by the construction; a botched planning process; and uncertainty about water service.
In some ways what is playing out in Woodstock is a more colourful microcosm of affordable housing disputes elsewhere. Still, the collision of environmental, neighbourhood and social justice issues is making people squirm in a place where the only thing more important than making the world better can be keeping Woodstock the same.
Since the 1969 festival of the same name was held (actually about 43 miles away), Woodstock has been synonymous in the minds of many with an easy-going hippy culture of live and let live and free love – “3 days of peace music” proclaimed the original poster. The reality in the small (population 6,241) upstate New York town is a little more prosaic.
“Nobody would tell you they don’t want these people in our town,” said Jeff Moran, the town supervisor, who has been a conflicted supporter of the project. “Instead, they talk about the effect on the quality of life, ramping up the costs of services and those kind of things. But there’s a joke in town that the reason the Woodstock Times costs a dollar is because people don’t want change. People come here and they think they have an investment in the town being a certain way.”
Opponents, particularly in neighbourhoods near the project site, said the issue isn’t nimby-ism or opposition to public housing but practical objections based on Woodstock’s small size, charmingly old-fashioned downtown and creaky infrastructure. Among their complaints: the project is too big; it is located at a dangerous bend for traffic; the site should remain green space. They have picked apart particulars, like the non-profit developer’s claim that residents would be within walking distance of a nearby “grocery store” that is actually a high-priced health food store.
“It’s politically incorrect to oppose an affordable project, so you can’t even look at it,” said Robin Segal, who has a doctorate in energy policy and who moved to town two years ago in search of a garden and peace and quiet.
She has since been consumed with writing and researching a detailed blog about the project that has found errors and problems the planning process missed. “But it’s the wrong project in the wrong place,” she says.
Woodstock’s lack of affordable housing has long been a public concern, albeit a low-level one, in a place where almost any building project – whether a cellphone tower, the expansion of a Buddhist monastery or solar panels at an animal sanctuary – can set off a nasty dispute.
Finally, an affordable housing committee identified a wooded site with sensitive wetlands behind the drab strip shopping centre leading into downtown and, in 2003, invited the non- profit Rural Ulster Preservation Company to design a plan.
Their first proposal called for 81 housing units and a community centre. That was later changed to 63 units without the centre, and still later reduced to 53. The current plans, with a green design and geothermal heating and cooling, would set aside some units for households making less than 30 per cent of the county’s median income of roughly $70,000 (€50,445) for a family of four; other units would have income ceilings of 50 and 60 per cent of the county median.
Twenty units are designed for seniors, half of them for seniors making 30 per cent of the median income that would rent for $325. The most expensive family units, with three bedrooms, would rent for $890. Ten units would be set aside for artists and writers.
For some, the issue isn’t complicated. Jackie Van Kleeck (75) had lived her whole life in Woodstock and has been a member of Woodstock Volunteer Fire Company No 1 for 56 years. But after her husband died three years ago, she lost his company to bankruptcy and then her house to foreclosure. She now rents a second-floor apartment in nearby Saugerties, even though she can barely manage the 17 steps.
“Woodstock, oh my God, no, I can’t afford it. I can’t come close,” she said. “What they have now is mostly city people who can afford it. Us little folks can’t. This project would be wonderful for people with no place else to go.”
Proponents of the project say the town has shamefully ducked its obligations on housing.
“This is a town where if someone is sick or someone’s house burns down, people will come out of the woodwork to be generous and to help, said Susan Goldman, a longtime community volunteer. “But we don’t see people who have a need for housing as part of that community. It’s a town full of social progressives, but we don’t look at our own community the way we look at the rest of the country.”
Paul Shultis jnr, chairman of the planning board that has overseen the project approval process, said Woodstock desperately needed housing for town employees and others so it could maintain some economic diversity. He said many critics were genuinely focused on environmental issues in a town where they often trump other concerns. But he was not moved by opponents’ arguments that the housing might go to outsiders and not to needy Woodstock residents.
“You move from the city and buy a $1.5 million house, and you’re a Woodstocker,” he said. “You’re at 60 per cent of the median income and you’re not a Woodstocker? I never got that.
“Yet in Woodstock, as elsewhere, others remain unconvinced that building affordable housing should be a major priority, especially since there is less expensive real estate in nearby towns.”It’s like if you can’t afford to live in Aspen, you don’t go to Aspen,” said Iris York, who lives near the project site. “You live where you can afford to live and where the jobs are. Go to Aspen and say, ’What are you doing to make this affordable?’ and they’ll laugh at you.”
She and other critics said they would prefer to spend money upgrading existing substandard housing. Rather than ending the controversies, the beginning of construction has brought attention to existing legal, procedural and environmental issues as well as created new ones.
Most prominent are uncertainty over water service and questions over who may have to pay for more than $100,000 in well tests before the project can connect to the water system.
Also, neighbours are irate over construction they say is ignoring the project’s permit requirements, an issue that will be aired shortly at a public hearing.
Moran, the town supervisor, said that it is very unlikely the project could be derailed. Still, he said, of residents paying attention, perhaps half supported it and half did not.
“People on both sides just want some resolution,” he said. “But people have different ideas what a perfect resolution would be.”
– (New York TimesNews Service)