A new partnership between Ulster County, the City of Kingston and housing nonprofit RUPCO will offer grants for low and moderate income homeowners to build affordable “Accessory Dwelling Units” on their property. The effort is part of a broader push by the city to encourage the development of ADUs to address Kingston’s housing affordability crisis.

ADU refers to a separate living unit with its own kitchen and bathroom facilities built into an existing property. Examples include basement apartments, backyard cottages and dwelling space built above a garage. The new Plus One Home Program will offer homeowners grants of up to $125,000 to build or refurbish ADUs on their property. In exchange, property owners must commit to renting the unit at an affordable rate for at least ten years. The program will also provide a range of services to assist property owners with financing, designing and obtaining permits for the construction of ADUs. The grant funding is available to homeowners who make up to 100 percent of the Area Median Income.

“The Plus One Home Program has big potential to fill a gap in our housing stock and provide much-needed housing choices for Kingston residents,” said Mayor Steve Noble. “The small properties that will be supported by this grant program could be life-changing for our residents.”

The program is funded with $1.75 million through the state Department of Homes and Community Renewal. The application process for the grant is expected to begin this summer. The program is expected to run for about two years at the current funding level. A separate allocation from the city’s federal pandemic relief funds will sponsor an ADU design competition. City officials say the competition will seek to develop a low-cost sustainable blueprint for ADUs with input from residents and community organizations, local architects and the building trades community.

ADUs play a key role in Noble’s strategy to make Kingston denser, more walkable and more urban while addressing the city’s dearth of affordable housing options. To that end, a new zoning code under consideration by the Common Council would make ADUs — which were not permitted in many neighborhoods just a few years ago — an “as of right” use citywide. Last month meanwhile, the council passed a resolution that will allow property owners to exempt a portion of the value of new ADUs from their tax assessments.

Supporters of ADUs say they address a wide range of issues. In addition to providing tenants with affordable housing and property owners with secondary income, secondary apartments can help elderly and disabled individuals remain in their family home. ADUs also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by creating additional living space inside the envelope of an existing dwelling and help break historic patterns of racial and economic segregation by giving low and moderate income residents access to wealthier “high resource” neighborhoods. But efforts to create a denser Kingston have also seen pushback from residents who worry about issues like noise, trash and traffic in neighborhood’s whose infrastructure was designed around simgle family homes.