KINGSTON – A proposal to impose an immediate moratorium on new emergency housing placements at the Kingston Motel was rejected by the Housing and Transportation Committee of the Ulster County Legislature on Thursday.
While it was acknowledged that the number of homeless people in the county has risen this year, lawmakers were concerned that if current people housed at the Kingston Motel are removed, there would be other place for them to stay.
Committee Chairwoman Debra Clinton sought to explore the issues in totality first.
“Coordinate and work with me to come up with a viable alternative that we can address the fundamental deficiencies that we know exist for al unhoused children, all unhoused families, and really come up with a way that we can address the concerns that exist,” she said.
Even opponents of the motel moratorium agreed that the conditions are less than optimum – with no kitchen, often broken refrigerators, faulty plumbing and other issues, they raised the point of moving the families to another motel may present similar problems.
Clinton and other lawmakers also expressed concern that that relocation would require busing young children to other school districts that could be in other counties.
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