KINGSTON READY TO REACH OUT
Pastor shows off renovations for proposed 6-room boarding house at Midtown church
A Midtown church’s plan to use its former parsonage as a boarding house for the homeless doesn’t have approval from the city yet, but the church already has dedicated more than $100,000 to renovations for the endeavor.
The Rev. Darlene Kelley, pastor of the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church, said Wednesday that it cost $19,000 per room to renovate six rooms that will be able to accommodate a total of 12 people.
Kelley spoke as she led members of the Kingston Planning Board on a tour of the renovated area at the church. She said the money came entirely from church coffers and fundraising.
The Planning Board still is reviewing the boarding house proposal. It next will take up the matter at its May 8 meeting. Wednesday’s tour was part of the review process.
Kelley on Wednesday showed off the completed rooms, all with two single beds, as well as renovated bathrooms.
She told the Planning Board members that the proposed boarding house, which will including housing for the mentally ill, will save taxpayers money.
“To have someone in jail it cost the county a lot of money,” she said. “... You can keep them off the streets, and with some care and with some grace, they can go to the next place. That is the goal here — to be a step-
ping stone.”
Kelley said people who live in the boarding house would have to attend classes, job-training sessions and substance abuse rehab, some held at the church.
“This is not a country club,” she said.
The Planning Board must grant the church a special permit in order for it to operate the boarding house. A written proposal for the project states: “Our goal is to create safe, supportive transitional housing using a boarding house model. 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 church, at 122 Clinton Ave., serves as a county-sanctioned warming center on cold nights, and it also is home to the Caring Hands soup kitchen. So Kelley said it was “natural” for “us to start focusing on the housing issues in Kingston.”
The boarding house, if approved, would operate on two floors in a vacant section of the church that once served as a parsonage. 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 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.