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Ulster County leaders gathered Wednesday to announce they are finally going to turn an eyesore by the Thruway into homes for the county's most vulnerable people. They told News 12 that after years of failed attempts to renovate it, this time it truly is going to happen. The long-vacant Quality Inn on Route 28 outside Kingston will be renovated into low-income housing, Kevin O'Connor of the sustainable housing agency RUPCO said as he showed News 12 the dusty lobby, which still has stacks of tourism pamphlets from 2020. O'Connor said the project will include on-site health and wellness services, a day care and a therapeutic pool. RUPCO will close on the property in September and begin construction soon after. "In a year and a half from now, we'll be opening the facility to 82 apartments for people in desperate need," O'Connor said following a press conference with Rep. Pat Ryan and local officials outside the eyesore Wednesday. This same group of lawmakers and housing advocates held a similar event in 2021, where they said the first tenants would be moving in by spring 2022. O'Connor said the plan fell apart mainly because they could not raise the necessary funds. The current cost is about $46 million, O'Connor said, adding that some things recently broke in their favor at the state level with grant funding and at home with private investment. O'Connor said a contribution of $5 million from the Kingston-based Novo Foundation was crucial. "It was one of the major finishing gap fillers here at the end," he said, "to help us get to the finish line." A housing-insecure county resident – also named Kevin – said he dreams of living in a place like the one the lawmakers and housing advocates are envisioning. He said that because of a slight change in his social security earnings, he became ineligible on Aug. 1 to continue living in the motel where the county's Department of Social Services had placed him. Kevin said he, his caseworker and his therapist have been scrambling just to find him a room and a bed. Aside from a couple nights when he paid for his own hotel rooms, he has been living in his 2009 Chevy Impala for the last two weeks. "I got lost going to the Rainbow Inn last night. I turned around and came back and spent the night at the parking lot over here," he said, pointing to the Park And Ride lot near the Thruway circle. "I went back to DSS today and I'm doing what I have to do for me." Rep. Ryan announced he is sponsoring four pieces of legislation to change income eligibility requirements for public housing assistance and speed up projects like the Quality Inn renovation. County Executive Jen Metzger praised Ryan for sponsoring the bills, saying low income housing projects must be built more quickly than the current pace in order for local governments to even come close to keeping up with the crisis she said is now out of control. Metzger shared a staggering new statistic to convey the urgency: The county's DSS now has about 500 clients living in "emergency housing," which mainly includes motels and shelters. She said that number is double what it was last year this time. "
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