MONTICELLO — Last month, the full board of the Sullivan County Legislature passed a local law to designate affordable housing as a Sullivan County public purpose. On Thursday, The Planning and Community Resources Committee of the Legislature had a discussion on what could be the next step – the Housing Trust Fund.

The main goal of the fund is to develop more inventory that a family of four can afford. Affordable housing is defined as no more than 30 percent of a household’s total income. The median income for a family of four is currently $71,400. 

Planning Commissioner Heather Brown came to the Legislature requesting that they give her a direction that she can bring back to Pattern for Progress on how to move forward.

Brown said that the developer of the rehabilitation properties would be required to maintain the units for a period of seven years at a rate that is affordable to a family that is making 80 percent or less of Sullivan County median household income. For new construction, the affordability standard must be maintained for 30 years, according to Distrcit 5 Legislator Cat Scott. 

Committee Chair, District 1 Legislator Matt McPhillips, noted that he believes that Pattern for Progress laid out a very comprehensive housing plan and that the county should move forward. 

“I think when we had taken a look at the presentation, we all kind of agreed that, at least as a trial run, we would like to try and get things started and really try to incentivize the rehabilitation of properties,” said Matt McPhillips. “I do know that there is interest in building new housing here. I think we should leave that aspect of the plan open just in case there is a way that we can incentivize some of the new development of that housing.”

Matt McPhillips said that that he would like to pursue that in the upcoming year. However, a few of the Legislators shared concerns with the housing plan, notably that there needs to be terms and conditions on keeping the housing fund going as stated by District 7 Legislator Joe Perrello. 

“You just can’t give the money away, people work hard for their money,” Perrello said. “Taxpayers are going to put money into this fund, then it needs to be reimbursed and replenished to be used again.”

District 3 Legislator Brian McPhillips agreed with Perrello, noting that knowing where the money is coming from in the future is important.

“Because it’s not something that you want to get the ball rolling and then you run out of funding,” Brian McPhillips said. 

Perrello also said that they should sit down with the Sullivan County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) on making sure that they make the payments and keep a schedule. Brian McPhillips said he believes it’s beyond just a conversation with the IDA, it’s also a conversation to have with the local municipalities and the school districts.

“Some of the municipalities, I think, kind of need to get on board because depending on their assessments, they have the ability to not assess at full value immediately,” Brian McPhilliips said. “Some of the prevention of fixing up properties is because you are outshelling a huge upfront cost, you’re being hit by an assessed value for what the building could become and then you’re not going to get that investment into the property because it’s an unrealized cost to the developer of that property.”

The Legislature currently already has $2 million budgeted for the Housing Trust Fund. Matt McPhillips noted that they can start with that to see what the interest is and what type of projects come back to get a proof of concept for the idea. 

Then, he said they can go into the next year either continuing with any money left over or, if there was a huge demand for the program, evaluate how effective it had been and what steps to take moving forward. 

After much back-and-forth discussion, Matt McPhillips gave Brown the authorization to reach out to Pattern for Progress to flush out more of the details and come back to the Legislature so they can continue to have conversations about the terms of the plan.