Once I was a Nimby. Not a leader or a firebrand, but a cheerer and a jeerer at public meetings, a citizen not up on the details but convinced a misguided proposal must be stopped. RUPCO, a leading non-profit, wanted to build an affordable housing project in Woodstock — Good! — but they'd chosen a patch of woods near the heart of town that I often walked by on my afternoon circuit of country lanes — Bad! Very bad! Couldn't they find a site already cleared, suited for new buildings? Why must the forest be sacrificed? At the time I wasn't far removed from living in a Catskills log cabin for five years, so I had a Thoreauvian reverence for trees. To be fair, these woods alongside Playhouse Lane weren't an ecological treasure, but an old farmer's field grown up over decades. Nor would the whole woods be lost, just the back seven acres for the proposed cul-de-sac townhouse development with a par course around the outer rim. Yet I saw this parcel as a pocket park of the Catskills wilderness nearby. If we don't stand up for nature, who will? Didn't Woodstock have plenty of potential places for these townhouses, if not in one location then parceled out? No, this wasn't a homegrown Woodstock solution to the housing shortage. This was the big bureaucratic heavies (both federal and state agencies) imposing their vision through rules and funding of what Woodstock should have, a vision as generic as any suburb. My one snarky comment at a public meeting, when we were shown an architectural drawing of the proposed townhouses, was, "It doesn't look like Woodstock.”

Was I wrong? Not necessarily. The encroachment into forests remains an unsung environmental threat. Woodstock has several species of salamanders now lost to Westchester where so many more houses and roads have cut through the woods to decimate these lowly creatures. But was I right? Well, let's just say, back then I was a recent graduate of cabin life, whereas 20 years later I'm settled in Midtown Kingston with a lawn and neighbors — and an acute housing crisis. (I lived in that cabin for $425/month. Now, yikes!) I've also grown to accept that there's no such thing as "a homegrown" solution. If not for the big bureaucratic heavies, we'd have nothing. Well, maybe that's hyperbole. Safer to say, homegrown may be worthy, but it's hardly enough.

At a tenants' organizing meeting a few months ago, I stopped by the RUPCO information table. I knew of three of their handsome projects in Kingston (none on forest land): the Lace Mill, Energy Square, and the Landmark. (Later, I learned RUPCO is one of Kingston's largest taxpayers.) How long were the waiting lists? Three to five years at the Landmark, I was told, similar at Energy Square. At the Lace Mill, five to 10. I was stunned. At my age five to 10 more birthdays aren't guaranteed. For the first time my heart went out in sympathy to RUPCO, no longer my old villain, now a determined force for the good. I suggested we needed a second RUPCO, maybe a third to get us out of this housing crisis. The fellow at the table nodded in solemn agreement. I called Kevin O'Connor, the head of RUPCO, to learn more.

O’Connor took the helm at RUPCO in 2002. At the time the Rural Ulster Preservation Company, as it was called (created in 1981), oversaw the Section 8 rental voucher program for several hundred people who relied on this federal subsidy to live in privately owned housing. As well, in 1993 the group had renovated the old Stuyvesant Hotel in Uptown Kingston into housing for seniors and the disabled. So the stage was set for O'Connor and tremendous growth. Coincident with his arrival, the City of Kingston offered RUPCO the derelict Kirkland Hotel, which now hosts O'Connor's office as well as apartments upstairs. More than a dozen major housing projects have opened, both restorations and new buildings, spread among Kingston, Rosendale, Highland, Prattsville, and, yes, Woodstock. Some 120 people work for RUPCO not just on their own properties but administering Section 8 vouchers, assisting first-time home buyers, and helping people facing foreclosure and other emergencies. Years ago, RUPCO expanded into neighboring counties and considered changing their name, but stuck with what they had. Why not? RUPCO is punchy, upbeat, and sticks in your head.

O'Connor likes to speak on his organization's behalf, and, by God, he's not mealymouthed. When I brought up my Woodstock Nimbyism, I felt like I was throwing chum to a shark so I threw out more to hear him snap, snap, snap. "Almost criminal" was his verdict on the delays he faced from the town planning board and the likes of residents like me, though in all honestly I was but a minnow compared to the barracudas who fought this project through petitions, hearings, letters to the editor, etc. Ten years was how long it took — five years in front of the planning board alone — between the phone call from the town government to RUPCO to please come build affordable housing and the ribbon cutting ceremony to open Woodstock Commons in 2013. Truth be told, I've now driven by this townhouse development tucked back in the woods many times and can't remember what the fuss was about. (My friend who lives nearby had a front row seat to the controversy as editor of the Woodstock Times. He says that the neighbors' biggest fear was losing value on their homes due to having public housing nearby. Did values go down? I ask. He snorts in reply.)

After ribbing me, though, O'Connor tells me that Nimbyism has ceased to be much of an issue for RUPCO, not in the face of the worst housing crisis of his lifetime. Too many people have now faced the crisis in their own lives, be it themselves, their family, or their friends. One former opponent from Woodstock later called O'Connor in search of housing for themselves.

I was invited for a walk-through of RUPCO's newest, biggest, most expensive project to date — the conversion of a former Quality Inn that closed during Covid into a permanent residence for people who've been homeless, a building called Willow Landing just over the Thruway from Exit 19. Due to open by the end of this year, it has cost $47 million and will have 83 apartments. As I pull into the parking lot I have vague memories of the tan bland Quality Inn, the kind of architectural blob often found by highway exits, so I'm more than a little impressed by what I find in its stead: a long sleek structure in downtown black paired with dark forest green with central glass entryway, a building that looks like a street front of buildings. A nightclub? A spa? No, not quite. As I'll soon learn, what I see embodies "trauma-informed design," an approach to promote comfort and safety, including the choice of soft, muted colors. Also, sunny open spaces, outdoor greenery, windows that open for fresh air, the opposite of a harsh institutional setting.

Sally Dolan, the project manager, greets me in the parking lot and hands me a hard hat. (She's also handing RUPCO's other current project, the conversion of an old Adirondack-style hotel into workforce housing in Tannersville.) Kevin O'Connor soon joins us, a lean, straight backed fellow whose helmet rides high but snug on his bald head. He pats me on the back to ask one more time what I think of Woodstock Commons. I'm a captive audience, but I'm honest in saying I like it. As we proceed inside, she provides the building specs, he provides the laconic commentary.

Construction is in the later stages where much work has been done, the walls painted light gray, yet plastic sheets still hang here and there like hallway drapery. At one point Dolan unwittingly steps in a small patch of wet cement as she reaches to open a hallway door. A worker smooths over the footprint as we take another route. At first, I didn't seem to notice we were in a hotel, really, with straight hallways and matching doors, but when I did, I didn't mind. Maybe I just prefer gray to beige. There will be one apartment for the super, 82 for residents divided among 26 studios, 28 one bedrooms, 22 two bedrooms, and six three bedrooms. Why are we in a housing crisis? One reason, says O'Connor, is that average family size has fallen from four-plus to two-plus, doubling the need. Some 200 people in Ulster County's homeless system have already applied by the time of my visit with more sure to follow. RUPCO will pick the lucky new residents to move in by the end of the year.

Willow Landing aims to do much more than just give residents apartment keys. It aims to foster a supportive community with an onsite staff of case workers and an activities coordinator, a front desk manned 24/7. There will be daycare and a playground and a dog run. A salt water swimming pool with a lifeguard in a bright sunny room that will be open to the public. Shuttle buses for shopping, doctor's appointments, just plain fun in town. Decades ago, public housing was plagued by ugliness and cheapness, creating the aura of "the projects" nobody else wanted to live nearby. A fundamental goal for RUPCO, O'Connor tells me, is to produce dignified housing that a child departing the school bus pulled up to the front will be proud to call home.

"Is it expensive?" O'Connor says of the $47 million price tag. "Yes, it's expensive." Might it have been cheaper to tear down the Quality Inn to build something new in its place? Maybe. But then all of this existing building material would have gone into a landfill. Part of his job, I suspect, is explaining why subsidized housing is no bargain.

If you crudely do the numbers you'll find that the Barrel Factory that recently opened in Midtown Kingston cost $240,000 per apartment, while Willow Landing comes to $560,000 per unit. Both were built by the same construction company from Rochester. Of course, Willow Landing will save money for its tenants in the long run with its geothermal heating/cooling and its solar panels on the roof. (Barrel Factory tenants will pay whatever Central Hudson wants to charge them for electricity.) Willow Landing will offer far more support to its tenants, but still we've established a system for financing subsidized housing than is anything but one-stop shopping. To the contrary, RUPCO had to apply for grants, tax credits, and loans from upwards of a dozen sources, state, county, and private, a significant load of paperwork that takes time, money, and effort. But what else are we to do? Ulster County recently counted more than 500 people in its shelter system for the homeless.

Yet numbers aren't the same thing as people. O'Connor has a commanding presence, but he also wears his heart on his sleeve. At separate RUPCO properties he met two women who moved in after living for the past three years in their cars. (One reminded him of his mother.) For them, for so many, the experience of moving into a nice apartment, a permanent residence after all they've been through, was such a potent a mixture of joy and relief and yet fear that it could be taken away, that he could see the whole of human emotion written in their facial lines and sunken deep in their eyes. "You want to wrap them in a blanket and say, 'You're going to be okay now,'" he says. As he tells me this story, I can see their faces reflected in his. Were I a better photographer I'd like to be the one taking portraits of people the day they move into Willow Landing.