This is a concise explanation for what can be shorthanded as the "welfare industrial complex." In life, there are two kinds of people/organizations when it comes to Other People's Money: those who are fiduciaries and husband the funds, and those who are not. Mr. Dodson's motivating factor seems clearly to be his own position, aggrandized by a swelling budget to over-build subsidized housing for those who don't exist within a community he purports to serve.
And then there's our "housing justice director," who is either shamelessly lazy and unconcerned about her own nonfeasance or completely out of her depth. I don't discount the possibility of both being true. In either event, the ineptitude and lack of action of any description is a spectacle in its own right.
So here we have, in our small city, 2 examples of this theory, I think. Tarring and feathering -- why'd we do away with that again?
I’d like to clarify the parts of this article that call me out by name or former title.
This article contains information that HCS is aware is untrue, and they have not edited the article in the 24 hours since they were alerted. As that false information is about my involvement in this project and this project is entangled in litigation, I take that seriously.
The article states that the 'county housing coordinator' was 'in the room where the decisions were made' about the Mill Street project. The county housing coordinator position wasn't even filled at the time Kearney's Mill Street project was approved. I was the first and (to date) only county housing coordinator, and my first day on that job was January 17, 2023. The Mill Street project was approved in 2022. The sale of the property was approved the evening of my first day on the job. I work fast, but not that fast.
It's no secret that I disagree with the HCS perspective, which is not in and of itself a big deal; reasonable people (and others) disagree on socioeconomic issues, it happens all the time. I also have my own personal issues with Hugo, the 'front person' for HCS, and I do my best not to engage with him. But I do very much take exception to people and platforms lying about me and my work.
Did you email us any corrections? Not seeing it in inbox to any of us or editors @
Happy to make a correction in your editorial on your central point, which is fair.
But your claim that the project was approved in 2022 compresses 3 key events, 2 of which overlap with your tenure:
- Kearney was selected in September 2022. - The Common Council approved the sale agreement on January, 2023. - The Planning Board granted conditional site-plan approval in May 2025 after several public meetings.
You joined in Jan 2023.
So for the almost 2 years that your job was coordinating housing in the County, did you approve of the Mill Street plan (knowing the park alienation and flood zone issue)?
Ditto the Bliss 2.0 plan; do you think, as a "Housing Professional", that we should spend $800k per housing unit to rebuild a challenged building on unstable soil?
We would be delighted to add your perspective to the docket:
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/docket-hha
p.s. Are you able to speak your mind and criticize the Mill Street plan knowing that a Kearny executive sits on the board of your current employer?
And in the interest of "Shared Facts" we have removed the statements that you highlighted, corrected your title, and added a dated correction to the article footer, as well as adding your dated commentary from Gossips (above) and linking back to the original Gossips story.
~
Ok, now with that done... what do you make of our application of (Milton) Friedman's 4th Quadrant of Waste to your work, or at least public spending on public housing?
Update: HCS edited the bit about my involvement with Mill Street; the last sentence or two that accuses me of 'coercing' Hudson residents into funding projects that run counter to the city's strategic housing and comprehensive plans are still up. It is worth noting that none of the projects I handled while at CEDC were sited within Hudson. This misinformation is less bothersome to me than the other, but it's still misinformation.
Perhaps in future, HCS might do the research and confirm easily confirmable facts prior to publishing information that they know they invented. One does wonder if this is the only instance of HCS publishing something so clearly fictive.
We made a narrow and fair correction and noted it in the footer.
~
We genuinely appreciate your good intentions, the fact that you actually read, and we share your desire to seek the truth. Imagine what you could achieve in the private sector if you were willing to put in the work.
If we ever represent facts inaccurately please email editors [at] and we will make narrow corrections based on primary sources. That said, we write opinions and share ideas, based on facts in the public record or established by folks like Gossips.
~
But see what you are trying to do here again when you say "one does wonder if this is the only instance of HCS publishing something so clearly fictive"
First - there was nothing "clearly fictive".
You were paid at CEDC, mostly by our federal tax dollars, to coordinate housing in the county. And you and your colleague in City Hall did not do a good job judging by the Mill Street mess (which overlapped with your tenure for 2 years) and other housing snafus.
And you are still silent on our questions:
1. What is your stance on the Mill Street / Kearney project?
2. What is your stance on the $800k per unit $200m plus Bliss 2.0 project?
One is in a flood zone and a State park, the other on unstable ground that can't carry the weight of big buildings.
You and Michelle Tullo are (or were for a 2 year overlapping period) paid by tax dollars to, respectively, coordinate housing, and effect "housing justice".
We can only be grateful you were not in charge of coordinating or "justice" of other critical public services...
You placed me in a room I wasn't in as if it was fact. I have had exactly zero involvement with the Mill Street project. At this point it seems to be an engineering question, and I am not an engineer, and don't pretend to be an expert in fields that I am not.
Please stop dragging me into your mess. Every time you intone my name, I feel compelled to set the record straight, whether it's with easily obtainable housing data or in this case, the simple facts of recent history. It's tiresome.
I'd add to this list of questions: where else in the county did the CEDC work to fund or incentivize housing, or was the organization content to let it all "just happen" in the city's corporate limits?
It is a turn of phrase, there was even a Lin-Manuel Miranda _Hamilton_ musical song about the turn of phrase, "the room where it happened." We could quote Dean Acheson's Pulitzer winning book about the phrase as used in the State Dept. but then we'd lose some readers.
Obviously, fiasco's like Mill Street and Bliss 2.0 happened in several rooms, over several years. That is the ... rub.
From rooms in 520 Warren (City Hall), to 560 Warren (County Clerk & Deeds, implying no fault just record keeping), to 41 N 2nd St (HHA), and of course MountCo and Kearney's offices or wherever the old boys club have steak dinner these days in Albany or Scarsdale.
The problem is those rooms were not always in public buildings and on the record, but in private residences north of Warren, or in Galvan residences South of Union Street where the former Mayor and Housing Justice Director lived at the time.
And these private conversations, often in private rooms and buildings, by pubic officials, regarding our public money, is how we end up with Bliss 2.0's false choice, with a lost 11 Warren St, with a flooded Mill Street, with forever trucks on our roads dangerous roads.
Throwback to Claire Cousin in 2024 giving these private machinations a name: "silent work"
"There's just silent work happening" in reference to the then mayor and City staff working on the RestoreNY grant... behind the scenes.
~
And CB, we will stop dragging you into anything when you stop advocating for policies that increase taxes on the working middle class, in one of the highest taxed states and towns in America.
Public money, public office = public scrutiny.
No one is bothering any of the private businesses or families in Hudson who work long hours and pay taxes to subsidize your tour of duty on the CEDC coordinating (or not coordinating?) projects that will now see Article 78s for years.
Also, if you were not involved with Mill Street and Bliss, then what on earth were you doing for 2 years? Both were the largest housing projects in a generation in the City.
Neither will break ground for years, if ever. And if they were properly shepherded to the right parcels, and in line with the Housing and Comprehensive Plans, we'd already be cutting ribbons now with Hinchey and Didi.
Hi John - pretty much everywhere in the county with an emphasis on the towns and villages.
The Plus One ADU grant program arose from a partnership between CEDC, the County and RUPCO. That program has been made available to 22 of the county's 23 municipalities.
CEDC helped the county create, and continues to administer, the Columbia County Land Bank. There are virtually no state-level funding programs for scattered, smaller-scale housing projects, but land bank funding is very flexible and a huge benefit to rural counties. The Columbia County Land Bank is soon to complete its first two projects; demolishing a blighted mill in Valatie and creating infill housing, and partnering with Habitat for Humanity to create 5-7 affordable homes in Germantown.
CEDC also played a central role in ensuring that every municipality in the county achieved Pro-Housing certification. That certification grants access to $750m worth of state program funds. Columbia County is the only county in the state with a 100% certification rate. About half of our communities (including Hudson) handled their own certifications; CEDC handled the other half.
There is currently an application to CEDC regarding the adaptive reuse of the Blue Spruce motel in Kinderhook. That project will deliver 50+ units at rents affordable to 90% of the Columbia County workforce.
CEDC is also the subrecipient and program manager of a grant that is funding the creation of a database of vacant, abandoned and distressed properties, as well as working with legal consultants to help municipalities create and/or enforce ordinances regarding tax delinquency and abandonment. That program is county-wide.
1. Government sets taxes, rules and regulations that help make our housing expensive.
2. CEDC, funded in part by taxpayers, then paid you to navigate those rules that that did not exist long ago, and secure state certifications.
3. Out came certifications, PDFs, Zoom meetings and a Land Bank (with Hudson's Michelle Tullo no less).
Then you moved to Pattern for Progress, whose housing centre works with municipalities (tax payer funded), housing agencies (tax payer funded), developers and builders like Kearney (taking HUD and HCR public funding).
- Reports become recommendations. - Recommendations become programs. - Programs require grants, administrators, consultants and more reports.
That is the Welfare Broker circular ecosystem we are criticizing.
The guys driving down Warren in trucks before 8am physically build and maintain housing.
The money and respect for housing belong to them.
They do not get LinkedIn bullet points for adding another layer of administration and taxes to our annual costs.
A Classical Liberal would observe that none of these Land Banks or ADU grant programs (that treat residents unequally) would be necessary if property taxes were lower.
Have you considered that you are part of the system making Hudson housing unaffordable?
Can you criticize Kearney's flood plain housing or are you now muzzled because they sit on your board and help raise money for your salary?
HCS - I wasn't talking to you, I was answering John's question. You'll notice that my answer wasn't about 'effort' or 'sincerity'; it was about results.
PDFs and Zooms strike me as odd things to call out; they aren't products, they're process. It's how the things I listed in that answer got done.
Michelle Tullo doesn't have anything to do with the Land Bank. Please check your facts.
I already spoke to Mill Street.
I would argue that people buying properties in 2021 for 300% of what they sold for in 2010, while the city's median household income increased by just 35%, has more to do with Hudson's affordability issues than regulations or taxes. Real estate comps are real. Buying out small landlords and evicting their tenants is real.
I get that you deal in opinions and ideas and not facts and figures. Perhaps the most recent annual report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies will help you educate yourselves on this topic. One of the key takeaways is that no amount of private market construction will adequately address our housing needs.
I think that's going to be it for now. Like I said, I try to avoid engaging with HCS, but their continued insistence on publishing false information, here and elsewhere, sometimes makes that difficult.
You might now go into great detail on why a Land Trust is different from a Land Bank... alternative facts!
These creations of bureaucrats are different mechanisms, complementary, but both subsidise particular (selected) households. i .e. unequal treatment and creates politics... who decides who gets the freebie?
We'd welcome a Guest Op-Ed from you explaining the difference between the two, and the other mechanisms used to lower costs for some citizens over others. Can't keep up with the creations of the Albany bureaucrats....
On your other point... then why does rent go down in many parts of America?
The bigger difference we have with your work, and that we'd be happy to debate in competing Op-Eds or on a debate stage... is that we agree that housing is not "affordable", like other regulated goods (healthcare, education).
It seems you support policies to use government to lower the cost, but only for some, at the expensive of others, which seems to be backfiring for everyone.
We at Common Sense advance policies to make everyone (who works) richer to afford what they want, and increase competition in the market to drive down costs.
Afterall, you and I have the same phone as a billionaire, but not the same house... which of those two assets are heavily regulated and without much competition?
In the end CB, if NY policies (that you work on) were working, why are New Yorkers leaving in droves?
In response to being told that you've once again posted incorrect information, you've shared a link to the Trillium Community Land Trust, which is of course not the Columbia County Land Bank Corporation. These facts aren't alternative, they're basic.
Thank you for repeating the point we clarified. We but simple folk, unfamiliar with the bureaucrat's toolkit to limit taxes on some while raising it on others.
Open Questions you have not answered:
1. Can you criticize the Mill Street flood zone development now that Kearney sits on your employer's board?
2. Do you want to write a Guest Op-Ed explaining the difference between land banks and land trusts, and all these entities that City of Hudson and CEDC employees seem to be setting up with themselves on the board while we pay your salaries?
3. If NY housing and affordability policy (your occupation) works why are we losing people faster than almost any other state in the nation?
1. Already answered. 2. No. 3. There are a lot of reasons people move from state to state. I'm going to guess that you're OK with the Tax Foundation as a source, given your perspective. They find that taxes are the reason people leave a state in about 11% of outmigration cases.
We commingled a land trust and a land bank.... sure, but you have now converted an R ^2 into a head count, to convince yourself the title of a story is not true.
The Tax Foundation did not find that taxes caused 11% of outmigration cases. It plotted states’ top marginal income-tax rates against their 2022–2023 net migration rates. Its R^ 2 of 0.114 describes the fit of that state-level relationship. It is not the percentage of individual movers who cited taxes, and the IRS data do not ask anybody why they moved.
To be fair to you, the Tax Foundation makes the same mistake and could be clearer.
The rest of YOUR source is less ambiguous. Its headline is “Americans Are Moving to States with Lower Taxes and Sound Tax Structures”. It reports that New York suffered a net interstate-migration loss of 71,987 income-tax filers and $9.9 billion in adjusted gross income between 2022 and 2023, along with the largest population-share loss attributable to interstate migration of any state in the nation.
The article does not prove that taxes caused every move... nobody claimed that is the single and only factor.
New York loses residents and taxable income on a remarkable scale. Hochul literally issued a statement about this asking former New Yorkers to return.
[You seem to have changed net migration into outmigration, cross-state variation into individual motives, and R ^2 into a percentage of human beings.]
So we are happy to rest on your evidence, so to speak.
Of course the plumbers, builders, business owners and job creators in tech or construction do not need regression footnotes to see the obvious, they call a spade a spade.
Maybe someone should start a blog called Common Sense.
Oh, wait.
Now if only you can help us all nail down the AMI requirements at Bliss 2.0.
Because we now have several different statements and filings about it, AMDLT, Dodson himself on the record, and more recently on a Kite's Nest stage (Welfare Broker collab?), and another from MountCo/Madeo.
Can you help us nail that down, or is that Michelle Tullo's job? Or HHA's job?
They are about to vote and we have no clear idea about this pretty important element of a "hard look."
"Bliss 2.0: The 2024 RestoreNY Grant Vote as a Rosetta Stone for Deciphering Hudson’s Bad Decisions"
We analyze the two bizarre "public meetings" in 2024, held out of sequence and with police presence required at one, to vote for the "RestoreNY" grant, which Dodson then never even submitted to Albany... but found the time to misrepresent to the uncritical Register Star.
The 2 hours of testimony and written records choreographs exactly how we got to this deeply flawed plan in front of the Planning Board today.
And which residents and lawmakers are lead by emotional appeals over reason.
[I.e. Do we want to feel good about ourselves today? Or do we want to do good for ourselves and others tomorrow, and the the day after, and the after that?]
Key leaders in the City went on the record.
The April 2024 fiasco (thank you TDP) became an animating force for several future mayoral candidates who will run against Mayor Ferris next year in the primary. It is also one of the reasons why Morris beat TDP 2:1 at the ballot box.
Stay tuned on Instagram for the 9am drop tomorrow or sign up at 12534.org for our Briefing.
p.s. The public meetings and procedural issues will be one of many elements in forthcoming administrative actions... Yes, that was a breadcrumb for MountCo's attorneys, who are either reading this daily, or will be reading this on repeat in 2027, 2028, and 2029.
This all could have been avoided if paid lawmakers read the documents, and if Hudson and Hudson's "Housing Justice Director" prioritized building necessary housing on city owned land (as outlined by the City Housing and Comprehensive Plan), over the schemes and profit motive of a private developer that gives Hudson a False Choice and turns the City into a receptacle for a doomed quarter billion dollar public housing project on unsuitable terrain.
This is a concise explanation for what can be shorthanded as the "welfare industrial complex." In life, there are two kinds of people/organizations when it comes to Other People's Money: those who are fiduciaries and husband the funds, and those who are not. Mr. Dodson's motivating factor seems clearly to be his own position, aggrandized by a swelling budget to over-build subsidized housing for those who don't exist within a community he purports to serve.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's our "housing justice director," who is either shamelessly lazy and unconcerned about her own nonfeasance or completely out of her depth. I don't discount the possibility of both being true. In either event, the ineptitude and lack of action of any description is a spectacle in its own right.
So here we have, in our small city, 2 examples of this theory, I think. Tarring and feathering -- why'd we do away with that again?
I’d like to clarify the parts of this article that call me out by name or former title.
ReplyDeleteThis article contains information that HCS is aware is untrue, and they have not edited the article in the 24 hours since they were alerted. As that false information is about my involvement in this project and this project is entangled in litigation, I take that seriously.
The article states that the 'county housing coordinator' was 'in the room where the decisions were made' about the Mill Street project. The county housing coordinator position wasn't even filled at the time Kearney's Mill Street project was approved. I was the first and (to date) only county housing coordinator, and my first day on that job was January 17, 2023. The Mill Street project was approved in 2022. The sale of the property was approved the evening of my first day on the job. I work fast, but not that fast.
It's no secret that I disagree with the HCS perspective, which is not in and of itself a big deal; reasonable people (and others) disagree on socioeconomic issues, it happens all the time. I also have my own personal issues with Hugo, the 'front person' for HCS, and I do my best not to engage with him. But I do very much take exception to people and platforms lying about me and my work.
Hi CB -
DeleteDid you email us any corrections? Not seeing it in inbox to any of us or editors @
Happy to make a correction in your editorial on your central point, which is fair.
But your claim that the project was approved in 2022 compresses 3 key events, 2 of which overlap with your tenure:
- Kearney was selected in September 2022.
- The Common Council approved the sale agreement on January, 2023.
- The Planning Board granted conditional site-plan approval in May 2025 after several public meetings.
You joined in Jan 2023.
So for the almost 2 years that your job was coordinating housing in the County, did you approve of the Mill Street plan (knowing the park alienation and flood zone issue)?
Ditto the Bliss 2.0 plan; do you think, as a "Housing Professional", that we should spend $800k per housing unit to rebuild a challenged building on unstable soil?
We would be delighted to add your perspective to the docket:
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/docket-hha
p.s. Are you able to speak your mind and criticize the Mill Street plan knowing that a Kearny executive sits on the board of your current employer?
Blink twice.
And in the interest of "Shared Facts" we have removed the statements that you highlighted, corrected your title, and added a dated correction to the article footer, as well as adding your dated commentary from Gossips (above) and linking back to the original Gossips story.
Delete~
Ok, now with that done... what do you make of our application of (Milton) Friedman's 4th Quadrant of Waste to your work, or at least public spending on public housing?
Update: HCS edited the bit about my involvement with Mill Street; the last sentence or two that accuses me of 'coercing' Hudson residents into funding projects that run counter to the city's strategic housing and comprehensive plans are still up. It is worth noting that none of the projects I handled while at CEDC were sited within Hudson. This misinformation is less bothersome to me than the other, but it's still misinformation.
DeletePerhaps in future, HCS might do the research and confirm easily confirmable facts prior to publishing information that they know they invented. One does wonder if this is the only instance of HCS publishing something so clearly fictive.
CB -
DeleteWe made a narrow and fair correction and noted it in the footer.
~
We genuinely appreciate your good intentions, the fact that you actually read, and we share your desire to seek the truth. Imagine what you could achieve in the private sector if you were willing to put in the work.
If we ever represent facts inaccurately please email editors [at] and we will make narrow corrections based on primary sources. That said, we write opinions and share ideas, based on facts in the public record or established by folks like Gossips.
~
But see what you are trying to do here again when you say "one does wonder if this is the only instance of HCS publishing something so clearly fictive"
First - there was nothing "clearly fictive".
You were paid at CEDC, mostly by our federal tax dollars, to coordinate housing in the county. And you and your colleague in City Hall did not do a good job judging by the Mill Street mess (which overlapped with your tenure for 2 years) and other housing snafus.
And you are still silent on our questions:
1. What is your stance on the Mill Street / Kearney project?
2. What is your stance on the $800k per unit $200m plus Bliss 2.0 project?
One is in a flood zone and a State park, the other on unstable ground that can't carry the weight of big buildings.
You and Michelle Tullo are (or were for a 2 year overlapping period) paid by tax dollars to, respectively, coordinate housing, and effect "housing justice".
We can only be grateful you were not in charge of coordinating or "justice" of other critical public services...
You placed me in a room I wasn't in as if it was fact. I have had exactly zero involvement with the Mill Street project. At this point it seems to be an engineering question, and I am not an engineer, and don't pretend to be an expert in fields that I am not.
DeletePlease stop dragging me into your mess. Every time you intone my name, I feel compelled to set the record straight, whether it's with easily obtainable housing data or in this case, the simple facts of recent history. It's tiresome.
I'd add to this list of questions: where else in the county did the CEDC work to fund or incentivize housing, or was the organization content to let it all "just happen" in the city's corporate limits?
DeleteCB -
Deletere: "placed (you) in a room"
It is a turn of phrase, there was even a Lin-Manuel Miranda _Hamilton_ musical song about the turn of phrase, "the room where it happened." We could quote Dean Acheson's Pulitzer winning book about the phrase as used in the State Dept. but then we'd lose some readers.
Obviously, fiasco's like Mill Street and Bliss 2.0 happened in several rooms, over several years. That is the ... rub.
From rooms in 520 Warren (City Hall), to 560 Warren (County Clerk & Deeds, implying no fault just record keeping), to 41 N 2nd St (HHA), and of course MountCo and Kearney's offices or wherever the old boys club have steak dinner these days in Albany or Scarsdale.
The problem is those rooms were not always in public buildings and on the record, but in private residences north of Warren, or in Galvan residences South of Union Street where the former Mayor and Housing Justice Director lived at the time.
And these private conversations, often in private rooms and buildings, by pubic officials, regarding our public money, is how we end up with Bliss 2.0's false choice, with a lost 11 Warren St, with a flooded Mill Street, with forever trucks on our roads dangerous roads.
Throwback to Claire Cousin in 2024 giving these private machinations a name: "silent work"
"There's just silent work happening" in reference to the then mayor and City staff working on the RestoreNY grant... behind the scenes.
~
And CB, we will stop dragging you into anything when you stop advocating for policies that increase taxes on the working middle class, in one of the highest taxed states and towns in America.
Public money, public office = public scrutiny.
No one is bothering any of the private businesses or families in Hudson who work long hours and pay taxes to subsidize your tour of duty on the CEDC coordinating (or not coordinating?) projects that will now see Article 78s for years.
Also, if you were not involved with Mill Street and Bliss, then what on earth were you doing for 2 years? Both were the largest housing projects in a generation in the City.
Neither will break ground for years, if ever. And if they were properly shepherded to the right parcels, and in line with the Housing and Comprehensive Plans, we'd already be cutting ribbons now with Hinchey and Didi.
Hi John - pretty much everywhere in the county with an emphasis on the towns and villages.
DeleteThe Plus One ADU grant program arose from a partnership between CEDC, the County and RUPCO. That program has been made available to 22 of the county's 23 municipalities.
CEDC helped the county create, and continues to administer, the Columbia County Land Bank. There are virtually no state-level funding programs for scattered, smaller-scale housing projects, but land bank funding is very flexible and a huge benefit to rural counties. The Columbia County Land Bank is soon to complete its first two projects; demolishing a blighted mill in Valatie and creating infill housing, and partnering with Habitat for Humanity to create 5-7 affordable homes in Germantown.
CEDC also played a central role in ensuring that every municipality in the county achieved Pro-Housing certification. That certification grants access to $750m worth of state program funds. Columbia County is the only county in the state with a 100% certification rate. About half of our communities (including Hudson) handled their own certifications; CEDC handled the other half.
There is currently an application to CEDC regarding the adaptive reuse of the Blue Spruce motel in Kinderhook. That project will deliver 50+ units at rents affordable to 90% of the Columbia County workforce.
CEDC is also the subrecipient and program manager of a grant that is funding the creation of a database of vacant, abandoned and distressed properties, as well as working with legal consultants to help municipalities create and/or enforce ordinances regarding tax delinquency and abandonment. That program is county-wide.
Thanks for asking!
Chris, we do not doubt your effort or sincerity.
DeleteBut zoom out:
1. Government sets taxes, rules and regulations that help make our housing expensive.
2. CEDC, funded in part by taxpayers, then paid you to navigate those rules that that did not exist long ago, and secure state certifications.
3. Out came certifications, PDFs, Zoom meetings and a Land Bank (with Hudson's Michelle Tullo no less).
Then you moved to Pattern for Progress, whose housing centre works with municipalities (tax payer funded), housing agencies (tax payer funded), developers and builders like Kearney (taking HUD and HCR public funding).
- Reports become recommendations.
- Recommendations become programs.
- Programs require grants, administrators, consultants and more reports.
That is the Welfare Broker circular ecosystem we are criticizing.
The guys driving down Warren in trucks before 8am physically build and maintain housing.
The money and respect for housing belong to them.
They do not get LinkedIn bullet points for adding another layer of administration and taxes to our annual costs.
A Classical Liberal would observe that none of these Land Banks or ADU grant programs (that treat residents unequally) would be necessary if property taxes were lower.
Have you considered that you are part of the system making Hudson housing unaffordable?
Can you criticize Kearney's flood plain housing or are you now muzzled because they sit on your board and help raise money for your salary?
www.HudsonCommonSense.com/manifesto
HCS - I wasn't talking to you, I was answering John's question. You'll notice that my answer wasn't about 'effort' or 'sincerity'; it was about results.
DeletePDFs and Zooms strike me as odd things to call out; they aren't products, they're process. It's how the things I listed in that answer got done.
Michelle Tullo doesn't have anything to do with the Land Bank. Please check your facts.
I already spoke to Mill Street.
I would argue that people buying properties in 2021 for 300% of what they sold for in 2010, while the city's median household income increased by just 35%, has more to do with Hudson's affordability issues than regulations or taxes. Real estate comps are real. Buying out small landlords and evicting their tenants is real.
I get that you deal in opinions and ideas and not facts and figures. Perhaps the most recent annual report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies will help you educate yourselves on this topic. One of the key takeaways is that no amount of private market construction will adequately address our housing needs.
https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/reports/files/Harvard_JCHS_The_State_of_the_Nations_Housing_2026_0.pdf
I think that's going to be it for now. Like I said, I try to avoid engaging with HCS, but their continued insistence on publishing false information, here and elsewhere, sometimes makes that difficult.
CB -
Deletere: Land Bank and Land Trusts:
Must be a different Michelle Tullo that looks like Michelle Tullo on the board:
https://www.trilliumclt.org/who-we-are
Here is the 2024 web archived version, showing you, Rebecca Wolff, and Michelle Tullo:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240622202609/https://www.trilliumclt.org/who-we-are
You might now go into great detail on why a Land Trust is different from a Land Bank... alternative facts!
These creations of bureaucrats are different mechanisms, complementary, but both subsidise particular (selected) households. i .e. unequal treatment and creates politics... who decides who gets the freebie?
We'd welcome a Guest Op-Ed from you explaining the difference between the two, and the other mechanisms used to lower costs for some citizens over others. Can't keep up with the creations of the Albany bureaucrats....
On your other point... then why does rent go down in many parts of America?
See Austin vs. Hudson Valley
https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/03/18/austins-surge-of-new-housing-construction-drove-down-rents
~
The bigger difference we have with your work, and that we'd be happy to debate in competing Op-Eds or on a debate stage... is that we agree that housing is not "affordable", like other regulated goods (healthcare, education).
It seems you support policies to use government to lower the cost, but only for some, at the expensive of others, which seems to be backfiring for everyone.
We at Common Sense advance policies to make everyone (who works) richer to afford what they want, and increase competition in the market to drive down costs.
Afterall, you and I have the same phone as a billionaire, but not the same house... which of those two assets are heavily regulated and without much competition?
In the end CB, if NY policies (that you work on) were working, why are New Yorkers leaving in droves?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_net_migration
In response to being told that you've once again posted incorrect information, you've shared a link to the Trillium Community Land Trust, which is of course not the Columbia County Land Bank Corporation. These facts aren't alternative, they're basic.
DeleteThank you for repeating the point we clarified. We but simple folk, unfamiliar with the bureaucrat's toolkit to limit taxes on some while raising it on others.
DeleteOpen Questions you have not answered:
1. Can you criticize the Mill Street flood zone development now that Kearney sits on your employer's board?
2. Do you want to write a Guest Op-Ed explaining the difference between land banks and land trusts, and all these entities that City of Hudson and CEDC employees seem to be setting up with themselves on the board while we pay your salaries?
3. If NY housing and affordability policy (your occupation) works why are we losing people faster than almost any other state in the nation?
1. Already answered.
Delete2. No.
3. There are a lot of reasons people move from state to state. I'm going to guess that you're OK with the Tax Foundation as a source, given your perspective. They find that taxes are the reason people leave a state in about 11% of outmigration cases.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-migration-trends-map-americans-moving-population-changes/
I really don't want to engage in this conversation anymore. Neither of us are going to convince the other of anything. Good luck with your endeavors.
CB,
DeleteIs this a trap?
We commingled a land trust and a land bank.... sure, but you have now converted an R ^2 into a head count, to convince yourself the title of a story is not true.
The Tax Foundation did not find that taxes caused 11% of outmigration cases. It plotted states’ top marginal income-tax rates against their 2022–2023 net migration rates. Its R^ 2 of 0.114 describes the fit of that state-level relationship. It is not the percentage of individual movers who cited taxes, and the IRS data do not ask anybody why they moved.
To be fair to you, the Tax Foundation makes the same mistake and could be clearer.
The rest of YOUR source is less ambiguous. Its headline is “Americans Are Moving to States with Lower Taxes and Sound Tax Structures”. It reports that New York suffered a net interstate-migration loss of 71,987 income-tax filers and $9.9 billion in adjusted gross income between 2022 and 2023, along with the largest population-share loss attributable to interstate migration of any state in the nation.
The article does not prove that taxes caused every move... nobody claimed that is the single and only factor.
New York loses residents and taxable income on a remarkable scale. Hochul literally issued a statement about this asking former New Yorkers to return.
[You seem to have changed net migration into outmigration, cross-state variation into individual motives, and R ^2 into a percentage of human beings.]
So we are happy to rest on your evidence, so to speak.
Of course the plumbers, builders, business owners and job creators in tech or construction do not need regression footnotes to see the obvious, they call a spade a spade.
Maybe someone should start a blog called Common Sense.
Oh, wait.
Now if only you can help us all nail down the AMI requirements at Bliss 2.0.
Because we now have several different statements and filings about it, AMDLT, Dodson himself on the record, and more recently on a Kite's Nest stage (Welfare Broker collab?), and another from MountCo/Madeo.
Can you help us nail that down, or is that Michelle Tullo's job? Or HHA's job?
They are about to vote and we have no clear idea about this pretty important element of a "hard look."
Indeed John.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow morning we publish:
"Bliss 2.0: The 2024 RestoreNY Grant Vote as a Rosetta Stone for Deciphering Hudson’s Bad Decisions"
We analyze the two bizarre "public meetings" in 2024, held out of sequence and with police presence required at one, to vote for the "RestoreNY" grant, which Dodson then never even submitted to Albany... but found the time to misrepresent to the uncritical Register Star.
The 2 hours of testimony and written records choreographs exactly how we got to this deeply flawed plan in front of the Planning Board today.
And which residents and lawmakers are lead by emotional appeals over reason.
[I.e. Do we want to feel good about ourselves today? Or do we want to do good for ourselves and others tomorrow, and the the day after, and the after that?]
Key leaders in the City went on the record.
The April 2024 fiasco (thank you TDP) became an animating force for several future mayoral candidates who will run against Mayor Ferris next year in the primary. It is also one of the reasons why Morris beat TDP 2:1 at the ballot box.
Stay tuned on Instagram for the 9am drop tomorrow or sign up at 12534.org for our Briefing.
p.s. The public meetings and procedural issues will be one of many elements in forthcoming administrative actions... Yes, that was a breadcrumb for MountCo's attorneys, who are either reading this daily, or will be reading this on repeat in 2027, 2028, and 2029.
This all could have been avoided if paid lawmakers read the documents, and if Hudson and Hudson's "Housing Justice Director" prioritized building necessary housing on city owned land (as outlined by the City Housing and Comprehensive Plan), over the schemes and profit motive of a private developer that gives Hudson a False Choice and turns the City into a receptacle for a doomed quarter billion dollar public housing project on unsuitable terrain.