Verily it is said, when virtue clashes with reality, something’s got to give.

Creating affordable housing in our region, still more of a campaign slogan than a work in progress, runs into two basic facts of life: The rents are too damned high and housing developers are not in the business of social engineering. They will charge what the market will bear, even if renters can’t bear it.

Kingston Mayor Steve Noble, who runs a city with some of the highest rents in the region, is attempting to balance the dire need for affordable housing with the necessity for developers to make a profit.

At last count, only two city lawmakers, Michele Hirsch of the Ninth Ward and Michael Tierney of the Second, are pushing for a level of determining what is "affordable" rent that Noble predicts could bring private housing development to a standstill, as if would-be developers have been storming the city gates of late.

Tierney and Hirsch, the left-wing M&M of council politics, have nowhere near the support it would take for Common Council passage (five votes), much less to override a threatened mayoral veto (six). The Hirsch-Tierney bill might not even pass committee, where it takes only three votes.

Does this mean rent controls in Kingston are dead in the water? Not yet. Tierney and Hirsch are nothing if not vocal and tenacious; this is after all an election year when all nine council seats are on the ballot.

In the throes of an election and with housing advocates pushing harder than ever, some compromise between intractable interests could emerge.

In the meantime, glimmers of hope shine faintly in the distance. RUPCO, which has built more affordable housing than any other entity, public or private, in the last 10 years, is probably working on preliminaries for another 100-plus apartment project. But at more than $400,000 a unit and rising, it gets more difficult every day.

The county’s Golden Hill affordable housing project is moving forward, as are the mayor’s pet plans for another project on city-owned land on former Urban Renewal land in Rondout. And the moribund Kingston Housing Authority is planning a four-story “tower” off its Midtown complex at Colonial Gardens.

Altogether, those projects might produce 400 units. The demand is in the thousands.

Put Me In, Coach

Politicians like to speak in sports cliches, but this business of newly re-elected House Speaker Mike Johnson calling himself the “quarterback” and soon-to-be president Donald Trump the “coach” should give pause. From Pop Warner kiddie leagues to pro sports, coaches call the plays. Quarterbacks follow orders, or else.

Given the traditional separation of powers, it’s not a good thing to have the executive telling the House of Representatives what to do.

It is understood that presidents have been influencing the other branches since ol’ G.W. (That’s what students at Kingston’s George Washington elementary school call their alma mater.)

Phone calls from the Oval Office to congressional leaders are the business of government, as are weekends at Camp David for legislative leaders, trips on Air Force One and praise from the bully pulpit. Johnson and Trump seem to be taking this traditional practice of horse-trading to a whole different level.

Flags Ahoy

I’m all for lowering American flags after a former president’s death out of mourning and respect. But does it have to be for 30 days? How about until after His Excellency is lowered into the ground? After that it becomes a subject of curiosity as in “Hey. The flags are at half-staff. Did somebody die?”

I’m not taking sides on this, though there is some suspicion among the president-elect’s supporters that mean-spirited Joe Biden ordered the 30-day lowering of flags, which will run through Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, just to show contempt for his successor.

Biden was hyper-partisan enough despite initial pledges to bring us together, but this flag flap was just about the calendar. Flags were lowered for 30 days for Ronald Reagan when he died, who incidentally defeated Jimmy Carter in a real landslide in 1980.

Trump is just a victim of bad timing. Heck, if Biden really wanted to diss The Donald, he would have ordered flags to be flown upside down, a signal of extreme distress.

Remembering Presidents

I’ve shaken hands with two future presidents in my storied career and actually watched an incumbent talk to one of my friends standing right next to me. That’s a lot closer than most people get to a president.

Carter and Reagan visited Ulster County within a year of each other in the mid-1970s. Carter had just won the Democratic nomination in ’76, the same year Reagan had lost the Republican endorsement to Jerry Ford. Carter appeared at a Democratic fundraiser at one of southern Ulster’s resorts. Visitors formed a reception line where they shook hands with him. “Hi,” the candidate said with that toothy smile and southern accent. “I’m Jimmy Carta and a’m running for president.”

Reagan held a press conference a year later at a similar site and seemed to know what he was talking about. Some of us thought he was too old at 65 to seriously contend again.

Bill Clinton came to town in 2000 to campaign for Rep. Maurice Hinchey. He held a standing-room-only audience in Kingston spell-bound for over an hour.

Afterwards, in true Clinton retail politics, he greeted every guest with a handshake in the foyer of the banquet hall.

I was standing next to my friend Larry Bauer, a retired Onteora High School teacher, when the president stuck out his hand. Larry was wearing a navy-blue tie with small sunflowers on it.

“Nice tie,” Clinton said, giving it a once-over.

“Thank you very much, Mr. President,” a dazzled Larry managed. Clinton, with a quizzical look, moved on.

“Thank you very much, Mr. President? That’s all you had?” I berated my friend after Clinton’s departure.

“What was I supposed to do?” he said.

“You yank that tie off your neck and you give it to the president of the United States, that’s what you do,” I said.

“But Joanie (his wife) gave me that tie,” he protested.

“Joanie can buy you another tie just like it,” I said. “You might have seen your tie on TV.”

My memories of Carter’s presidency are mixed. I was actually at Carter’s inauguration on a bitter cold windy day, full of hope that this newcomer from Georgia would never lie to us.

I also had the misfortune of owning a struggling weekly newspaper during the Carter years of high unemployment, crushing inflation and something called “stagflation.” It was like the county had ground to a halt.

While Carter will always be revered for his admirable long, post-presidency, I think as president, historians will rank the peanut farmer somewhere between Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan. That is to say, pretty low.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer; they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Kingston Wire Editorial Team.