News from HHA

At Wednesday's meeting of the Hudson Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, several things of interest were revealed in John Mateo's report to the board. Mateo, of course, works for Mountco, HHA's development partner. 

In his report, Mateo revealed, as he has before, that the person who appears to be the project's principal contact at NYS Homes and Community Renewal is Eu Ting-Zambuto, who, until May 2025, worked for Mountco and in fact worked on this project. That seems like a conflict of interest, but who's to say?

Ting-Zambuto and Madeo at an HHA meeting in July 2024

After reporting that the Planning Board has closed the public hearing and scheduled a special meeting on September 30 dedicated solely to this project, Madeo expressed the hope that the Planning Board "will be in a position to vote" on the project at its October 13 meeting. He commented, "If they do, it will fit with our schedule moving forward." Regarding the site plan review process, Madeo said, "We have never had as many questions from the public and the Planning Board as we've had here."

Madeo also told the board that they still need to get an equity provider to buy the project's tax credits. He indicated the market for tax credits was not good at this time but said that in the past weeks they have gotten "strong interest" from two firms that Mountco has done tax credit deals with in the past. 

As Madeo indicated, there is currently a gap between the amount of money needed for the project and the amount they have. If they cannot fill the gap, the state must decide if it will provide the funding needed to close the gap. He cited three factors that make the HHA project problematic: low rents (82 percent of the units will be designated for households with incomes below 50 percent of the area median income); brownfield conditions that must be remediated; soil conditions that require extraordinary construction techniques.

A couple more things of interest emerged from Wednesday's meeting. It will be recalled that HHA is in the process of selecting a name for the proposed new development. The process began in January, when suggestions were solicited and received. It seems recently there was a vote among tenants to select the name, but the results had to be scrapped because it was discovered that someone had stuffed the ballot box, voting multiple times for their favorite name. As a consequence, there will be a do-over, with controls in place to prevent people from voting more than once.

The HHA Board of Commissioners has been short a member since Sara Black resigned in April after being appointed to the Planning Board. On Wednesday, Mayor Joseph Ferris appointed a new member of the HHA board: Ben Ezinga. Ezinga is a partner in Sustainable Community Associates (SCA) which in April 2016 proposed a plan for the redevelopment of the Kaz warehouses, the same area now proposed to become Waterfront Village. In March 2017, the SCA plan was essentially abandoned.

Ezinga was present at Wednesday's meeting. It was decided that he would take Claire Cousin's seat on the Redevelopment Committee. (Cousin resigned in January when she became a councilmember representing the Fifth Ward.) The Redevelopment Committee, which was created in August 2024, was originally composed of Cousin, Rebecca Wolff, and Nick Zachos, with Revonda Smith as an alternate.

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