By DEBORAH E LANS
HUDSON–What does it mean to be homeless in Columbia County? If you are not living on the streets, in a park or with relatives, it means you are sheltered in a motel. The costs to the county are substantial. The conditions are dismal.
Robert Gibson is the commissioner of the county’s Department of Social Services (DSS), whose “clients” include the homeless. He put the situation succinctly to The Columbia Paper: “For the entirety of this year, we have used every room available to us each night to house our clients…at least $2.4 million has been spent on lodging alone so far [through October] this year.” Costs for food and transportation of the unhoused will run another $300,000 to $400,000 in 2024.
Worse, the numbers are growing over time. Commissioner Gibson joined DSS in 2014 when “we used to average between 70 and 80 individuals during the winter months and 10 to 20 during the summer months.” Now the numbers are steady from season to season, and they are rising. The number of individuals that DSS housed rose from 130 in January to 151 in August and 163 in October. Says Commissioner Gibson: “You can see we are trending direly in the wrong direction.”
Moreover, the conditions at many of the motels are “deplorable,” according to Daniel Almasi, the director of Community Services for the county, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services. Mr. Almasi gave The Columbia Paper these examples: bodily fluids on walls, bed bugs and roaches, drug dealers circling, random acts of violence occurring. Many of the homeless are trauma survivors, yet they are housed in conditions that are triggering, not safe. Indeed, for that reason, people continue to sleep in Hudson’s 7th Street Park even in “code blue” weather. Mr. Almasi knows one man who sleeps in a tent near the DSS offices in preference to emergency motel housing.
A study just issued by Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress (Pattern) “When Hotels Become Home” reports the same situation in the four Hudson Valley counties of Dutchess, Orange, Sullivan and Ulster: an increase in the number of persons placed in hotels and motels and an increase in the length of their stays.
While there are a number of causes of homelessness, several facts are clear: very often the unhoused also suffer from serious mental health issues, substance use disorders or both. There is a well-trod circle between the streets and prisons as a result. The homeless are often jailed for petty crimes and property violations many of which are, in turn, the result of efforts to survive: breaking into buildings, stealing to buy food. Others are jailed for the possession of drugs. One study found that nationally the rate of people who had been homeless in the one year preceding their incarceration was between 7.5 to 11.3 times greater than that of the general population, and the homeless made up 15% of the country’s jail population.
Not only are the homeless overrepresented in jails, but a jail or prison stay can lead to homelessness on release, as the incarcerated lose their jobs, may see their family and personal connections severed and may have difficulty finding housing. A federal Department of Housing and Urban Development study found that more than 50,000 people enter shelters directly from correctional facilities every year due to their inability to find permanent housing.
Another cause of homelessness is eviction. The state’s Unified Court System records eviction data. The number of evictions in the county rose from 188 in 2019 to 235 in 2023. The rising cost of housing puts homes out of reach for many, as this paper has reported in past issues. Moreover, some government-supported housing sanctions renters for drug or alcohol use or behaviors indicative of mental health issues, disqualifying those who need government services and exacerbating their conditions.
The Pattern report found a striking anomaly in the way that public funds are allocated – one that “inadvertently prioritize[s] temporary placements over permanent placements.” Using Ulster County as an example, the report shows that because of the way federal and state reimbursement programs are structured “the public is paying double the cost of an apartment to instead shelter families in hotel and motel rooms. That is partly because the funding allocated for permanent housing – money that supports people to rent an apartment —would only cover a small portion of rent.”
The Ulster County numbers, according to Pattern, work like this: “Reimbursement rates for emergency temporary placement for one hotel room is $100 per night which adds up to an average of $3,000 per month. For families with children, who are often placed in two adjoining rooms, the monthly cost according to officials is closer to $5,000. These costs would be reimbursed under emergency temporary housing. If the county’s DSS successfully found an apartment for a two-person family – for example, a single parent and child – the reimbursement would drop to $596 per month.”
While the numbers in Columbia County are slightly different, the conclusion still applies. The county pays $70 to $106 per night for motel housing, or at the low end $2,100/month, whereas the fair market rental for a one-bedroom apartment is $952/month and for two bedrooms $1,107/ month, according to Pattern’s 2023 study of the rental market “Out of Reach.” Those numbers make the case for more affordable housing as a cost-saving measure painfully obvious.
Cost is not the only measure by which emergency housing in motels fails. Shelter for the unhoused should include not only a roof and walls but also case management, food and transportation – directed to finding housing and increasing stability for the unhoused. But, often, food in motels consists of whatever can be microwaved and other services are hard to facilitate. The motels are often distant from the necessary services, as the chart shows, and DSS personnel are pressed to supply transportation from motels to the necessary services at treatment facilities.
In addition, in hopes of securing continuity for children, state law requires that an unhoused child be transported by his school district to the school he has been attending before becoming homeless. The costs to school districts of such transport are significant especially because of the far-flung location of the motels. In the 2022-23 school year (the most recent year for which the state has records) there were about 150 school-aged children unhoused in the county. In October 2024 there were 49 children living in motel “shelters.”
To date, Columbia County has no “homeless” shelter. Motels aside, its only facility for the unhoused is a recently-opened overnight warming facility (the Blanche Hotaling Mission) in Hudson. Fortunately, as the next article will report, there are plans well underway to change this in significant ways.
To contact reporter Deborah Lans, email deborahlans@icloud.com.
