Another Tale of Two Cities

Earlier this week, a reader alerted me to an article in the Times Union about Poughkeepsie and its affordable housing challenges: "Housing development in Poughkeepsie met with lawsuit, opposition." 

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Reading the article, one is struck  by the parallels between Poughkeepsie and Hudson, including a Housing Needs Assessment done for Poughkeepsie by Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, the same group that did Hudson's Strategic Housing Action Plan and its Affordable Housing Development Plan. 

The proposed development that is meeting with opposition in Poughkeepsie is called the Wallace Campus, and it would provide 187 units of affordable housing. The plan that is causing concern in Hudson is the Depot District, which would provide 138 units of affordable housing. 

Here are some more comparisons. According to the article, the Poughkeepsie Housing Authority operates 359 units of subsidized housing. The Hudson Housing Authority operates 135 units of subsidized housing. The article reports that according to Poughkeepsie's Housing Needs Assessment, there are 2,235 units of subsidized affordable housing in that city. In 2019, the Hudson Housing Authority calculated that there were a total of 525 units of subsidized affordable housing in Hudson, but that number did not include the vast inventory of subsidized units that Galvan took over from Columbia County Housing Resources in 2014.  

The difference, of course, is that Poughkeepsie is a city with a population of 31,577, according to the 2020 census; Hudson is a city of 5,894. The population of Hudson is less than one fifth of the population of Poughkeepsie, yet the total amount of subsidized housing that currently exists in Hudson is considerably more than one fifth of that found in Poughkeepsie.

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