Friday, March 9, 2018

About the Galvan Motel

On Thursday, March 15, the Board of Supervisors Health and Human Services Committee will hold a special meeting to discuss the proposed contract with the Galvan Foundation to house people in Columbia County who are without homes in the former Sunset Motel on Route 9 in Greenport.

The meeting takes place from 4 to 5 p.m. at 401 State Street. The contract being contemplated, between the Columbia County Department of Social Services (DSS) and "Galvan Civic Housing LLC" can be viewed here

Yesterday, the Columbia Paper ran an editorial about the proposal by its publisher Parry Teasdale: "What's a 'civic motel'?" In it, Teasdale makes this observation about the enigmatic stratagems and machinations of the Galvan Initiatives Foundation: "By local standards the scale of the projects associated with the Galvan Foundation suggest the City of Hudson and, to a lesser extent, the county, have become the subject of a social engineering experiment. We just haven't been told what it is that Galvan has in mind for us. It's not scary. But it is kind of weird." After making this observation, though, Teasdale concludes that entering into the proposed agreement with Galvan Civic Housing is "worth a try."

Others are not so sanguine about the possible future of the Galvan Motel. A reader this morning sent me the link to an article that appeared yesterday in the New York Post: "Officials say NYC is illegally shipping homeless families upstate." The upstate destination in this report is Broome County, but for those fearful of Galvan's motives and goals, it seems like a cautionary tale.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CAROLE OSTERINK

6 comments:

  1. Yikes! Broome County is where I was born and where some of my family still live. People from other places (I don't know if it was New York City or not) have been "shipped" there before. Who is doing this?

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  2. As I have written before, we have yet to see a report by the County that tells us what the current homeless system is, how it works, what it costs, etc. Nor have we seen an RFP (request for proposal) that would suggest what the County wants and offer anyone interested to bid for a contract with the County.

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  3. Its how we got Bliss Tower .

    Now its a new game with the same deck.

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  4. I think we have to look more closely at the statistics of homelessness. there seem to be a few in Hudson, but not alot. i really question the whole enterprise--- the enterprise of " the industry of poverty" that seems to be one of the big dollar driven businesses in Hudson and the county. IS this what the future holds here ??

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  5. Galvan has only one initiative. If you haven't seen it coming you are fools. He is completing his monopoly board and will take over Hudson, milking as much money as he can from all sources, and develop a City of homeless developments. He will avoid paying taxes, leave properties undeveloped until he's damn good and ready, and bulldoze those who are blinded by his strategic generosity to buy favor and allegiance. He has been allowed to go unchecked. How has Eric Galloway been permitted to develop what he wants without any input from the City, from the County? How he has gotten away with purchasing Housing Resources' real estate, which was for the purpose of affordable housing, then driven tenants out and substantially increased rents? Rise up and oppose him as you have successfully done recently, to stop him from acquiring more money from grants and awards to the City. Stop this madness before it is too late and he drives real estate prices into the ground.

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  6. The painful and unnecessary demise of Housing Resources was aided and abetted by elected officials at the city and county level, board members who were largely County employees who held management level positions, bankers, accountants, members of the faith community, and excluding Carole's TGOR, both the Register Star, and to a lesser extent, the then
    Independent. Diana Ladden received a statewide media award for her investigative story about Housing Resources. And even in light of that headline story. . . crickets from the people in charge.

    All of those folks listed above opted to ignore and dismiss employees who presented them with scads of evidence regarding mis management and worse.

    Over and over again.

    Susan

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