Kingston, NY – Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha will hold a town hall at the Ulster County Restorative Justice Center on Friday night, May 2nd, at 6:30 PM, to present and take questions on a state proposal to build high quality and permanently affordable homes. Shrestha is the prime co-sponsor of the Permanently Affordable Social Housing for New Yorkers Act (A06265), which would create a new state authority whose function will be to increase the state’s affordable housing stock either through purchase and rehabilitation of existing buildings, including vacant or distressed buildings, or through building new ones.

“Between 2020-2024, energy costs in New York increased by 30%, and housing costs by almost 20%,” said Assemblymember Shrestha, “But it’s the housing cost that’s behind inflation in our state being higher than the national average. Presently, the Governor is proposing to spend $3 billion giving households a one-time check of $300-$500, which we know is too little to be effectively helpful, but if we were to invest that $3 billion in increasing the stock of high quality affordable homes for a wide range of incomes, its impact on lowering our inflation would be much more significant and long-lasting. It would mean that families can focus on increasing their quality of life in aspects other than housing, or perhaps pay their debts quicker; it would mean families can plan for their future, such as sending their children to college or making medical plans, without having to worry about where they’re going to live, and it would mean the people who work to power our economy would be members of a much more stable and healthy workforce. Right now, we already spend a substantial amount of public money on tax breaks and subsidies we give to private developers, but we know that even if they held their end of the bargain and build a lot of homes, not enough of them would be affordable, and not enough of them would be for our constituents who are getting displaced—the primary purpose of those homes would still be profits, and not permanent affordability, and we want to flip the script on that. We want to create a public developer that can build desirable homes in places like the city of Kingston where no matter how much you make, the quality of your unit will be the same as the others, and you will not pay more than 25% of your income.”

Doors will be open at 6 PM and the program will begin at 6:30 PM.
RSVP is required: bit.ly/social-housing-103