RUPCO sues city in zoning dispute
Agency contends Alms House request didn’t require ‘supermajority’ approval
KINGSTON, N.Y. » RUPCO has filed a lawsuit against the city in the wake of the Common Council rejecting the affordable housing agency’s request to rezone the former Alms House property on Flatbush Avenue.
RUPCO contends the council acted improperly when it accepted as valid a protest petition filed by city residents who oppose the agency’s housing plan for the site. Accepting the petition triggered a requirement that a “supermajority” of at least seven of the council’s nine members vote in favor of the rezoning in order for it to take effect. The vote on July 11 was 5-4.
Kevin O’Connor, the agency’s chief executive officer, announced the Article 78 lawsuit in a letter Tuesday afternoon. He wrote that RUPCO also could pursue a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and
follow up with a lawsuit against the city for failing to make a reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities.
An Article 78 lawsuit is a legal challenge to the action of an administrative or governmental body. RUPCO filed its suit Aug. 18 in state Supreme Court in Kingston.
Daniel Gartenstein, Kingston’s assistant corporation counsel, said Tuesday that the lawsuit is “being forwarded to our client, which is the Common Council.” He said his office will meet with council members this week and advise them of the arguments raised by RUPCO. Gartenstein said his office will answer any questions from lawmakers during that private attorney-client session and then respond to the complaint.
RUPCO has proposed buying the property at 300 Flatbush Ave. from the Ulster County Economic Development Agency for $950,000 and creating a 66-unit apartment project there called Landmark Place. The agency requested the Common Council rezone the property from single-family residential to multifamily residential, but that move was challenged by neighbors who filed the protest petition.
Hours before the July 11 vote, RUPCO filed an amended request asking the council to rezone a majority of the former Alms House property while leaving a 101-foot buffer from neighboring land owners unchanged. That amended petition went to the council’s Laws and Rules Committee last week, where action was tabled.
O’Connor wrote that the amended petition, on behalf of senior citizens and vulnerable elders served by RUPCO, was “one strategy to protect our collective rights.”
“While New York state law allows for a protest petition by neighbors of a proposed rezoning to trigger a supermajority, the law is equally clear that if there’s a 100-foot buffer between the rezoning and the neighbors, a protest petition from neighbors cannot force a supermajority for approval of the rezoning, and a simple majority vote is enough to approve it,” he wrote.
And through the city assumed the protest petition was valid, O’Connor wrote, “we believe the petition fails the legal requirements and should have been rejected.” He said that was the basis for the Article 78 suit and that RUPCO believes the court will deem the 5-4 vote in favor of the rezoning to be sufficient.
As for filing a complaint with HUD and an additional lawsuit, O’Connor
said: “The record is clear that certain members of the Common Council relied on inflammatory and discriminatory rhetoric against protected classes in making their decision on the original rezoning request. Simply put, a municipality may not make zoning or other land use decisions based on neighbors’ fears that a dwelling may be occupied by members of these protected classes.”
RUPCO is proposing to create 34 apartments in the existing vacant Alms House structure and 32 more units in a four-story building it would construct on site. The housing would be open to individuals 55 and older, and more than half of the units would offer support services to a mix of homeless populations with special needs.
RUPCO’s purchase of the property was contingent upon the rezoning being approved.
Neighbors of the Flatbush Avenue property have, among other issues, raised concerns about impacts on the city’s sewer system and the safety of residents in the neighborhood after Landmark Place is filled.
Constructed in the 1870s as a place to care for the city’s poor, the Alms House later was used as a tuberculosis ward in the 1950s and then housed Ulster County’s Department of Health offices.