The rarely seen political species Legislatus bipartisanus made an Ulster County appearance last week with the legislature's passage of Resolution 237, allocating more than half a million dollars to provide legal services this year to low-income tenants facing eviction.

The money — $567,621, to be exact — will go to non-profit Legal Services of the Hudson Valley, which under a pilot program last year used $221,430.60 of county ARPA funds to help more than 50 families stave off eviction through legal and budget counseling and help with small arrears.

The new resolution was co-sponsored by Majority Leader Abe Uchitelle (D-Kingston) and Minority Leader Kevin Roberts (R-Wallkill) — with the enthusiastic support of County Executive Jen Metzger — and passed unanimously.

“There's an appetite for helping folks that have fallen on hard times on both sides of the aisle and when we knew that the initial pilot program was winding down the first phone call I made was to Kevin Roberts,” said Uchitelle. “I'm really grateful that he was on board with working on this. And goes to show how much you can get done when you include both sides of the aisle from the very beginning.”

Uchitelle said there were two significant lessons learned from the 2023 pilot program, both of which underlined the legislature's decision to renew and expand it. One involves a team approach. The other speaks to the persuasive power of the long green.

“One of those things,” he said, “is that when you pair attorneys with case managers, you're actually able to take a much more holistic approach to make sure that the work that you're doing in the courtroom is going to put them in a sustainable situation in their home. The case manager that Legal Services was able to hire was able to help clients figure out how to get their SNAP benefits sorted out, figure out if they were overburdened on rent and needed to get into a different situation. Help them figure out if maybe the home needs to be cleaned in order to, you know, make the landlord comfortable with them staying there. There were a lot of things that happened outside of the courtroom that never would have been possible without that.”

“The second thing,” he continued, “is that when the attorneys are able to go into the courtroom and say, here's the situation with my clients, we've worked with them through our case management to make their living situation sustainable, and I have their rental arrears money right here. And so we have learned that when the lawyers go into the courtroom with the rental arrears money ready to pay, they're able to get cases resolved more quickly.”

The attention to landlord concerns appears to have provided the balance that brought the Legislature's minority members on board after their unanimous opposition to the 2023 pilot program.

“I have significant issues with spending taxpayer funds,” Roberts said. “I use the Golden Hill [affordable housing project] as an example: $80 million to come up with 164 units. To me, that doesn't make sense. But if we could spend a few dollars to keep people in their homes, in their apartments, it's well worth it.”

“My analogy,” he continued, “is that the eviction defense program is more springboard than hammock. It reimburses the landlords for the late payments, hopefully gets the tenants whole and, once they get on their feet with this one-time allotment, they can get on with their lives. I'm looking forward to hearing the many success stories that this program will provide.”

A cost-benefit analysis of the program offers strong support for its utility, according to Uchitelle. “The state has structured social services such that the county is responsible for making sure that every single resident, every single person in Ulster County, every single night, has a place to stay,” he said. “And if these are folks that don't have homes to stay in, it is the responsibility of the county to put them in shelters and hotels, which is an incredibly expensive undertaking. By keeping people in their homes, we're able to not only make their living situation more sustainable, we're actually able to save the county taxpayer money by not spending thousands of dollars a month on hotel and instead spending hundreds of dollars and keeping them in their home.”

Uchitelle pointed to other areas of potential bipartisanship including charter reform and public safety issues. Roberts agreed, though with a slight bit of grousing. “You know,” he said, “it seems like if there's any bipartisanship, it's always the minority caucus bending or moving towards majority position. You never see the majority party move slightly toward ours to work with us to get some of our priorities.”

Nevertheless, he said, “The minority caucus is willing to work with the majority party whenever we can.”