HOMELESS MAY FIND REFUGE AT CHURCH
Proposed boarding house in Midtown would accommodate up to 12 people
The Clinton Avenue United Methodist Church, already home to a soup kitchen and a county-sanctioned “warming center,” wants to turn its former parsonage into a boarding house for up to 12 homeless people.
The proposal is to be the subject of a Kingston Planning Board public hearing at 6 p.m. Monday in City Hall. The board would have to grant the church, at 122 Clinton Ave. in Midtown, a special permit in order for the boarding house to operate.
“Our goal is to create safe, supportive transitional housing using a boarding house model,” a written proposal for the project states. “This project developed naturally from our work as Ulster County’s only warming center as we came into immediate contact with the city’s homeless population. We recognize the crucial need for supportive, transitional housing and related services for folks experiencing homelessness, truly the least among us.”
The Rev. Darlene Kelley, pastor of the church, said Wednesday that it was a “natural” for “us to start focusing on the housing issues in Kingston.”
Kelley also said the boarding house environment would be “highly regulated” and not of a warehouse nature.
The written proposal says the church is “uniquely qualified to provide housing as the only community-based organization in the city of Kingston that provides hot meals and connective services to this fragile population.”
The church becomes a warming center for the homeless by order of Ulster County Executive Michael Hein on certain cold nights. It also is home to the Caring Hands Soup Kitchen.
The proposal says the boarding house would be able to accommodate a total of up to 12 people on two floors in a vacant section of the church that once served as a parsonage, and that it would be staffed 24 hours a day. The occupants would be in six rooms, two to a room, and the proposal states they would have to adhere to a strict set of rules.
The proposal says the boarding house would benefit the community “in several ways.”
“We will be giving individuals experiencing homelessness a fresh start at stability, encouraging individuals to turn their lives around and choose healthy goals,” it states.
The Clinton Avenue proposal is one of two before the city Planning Board that would provide housing for the homeless. The other is RUPCO’s proposal to create a 66-unit apartment complex called Landmark Place at the site of the former Alms House on Flatbush Avenue.
More than half of the units at Landmark Place would offer support services to a mix of homeless populations with special needs, including veterans and frail or disabled seniors, RUPCO has said.
The RUPCO plan also is on the Planning Board’s Monday agenda.