What’s new at the Land Bank? Read about what properties we’re working on this summer and more here.
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Want to own an amazing, affordable home in Kingston? Consider becoming a Kingston City Land Bank (KCLB) homeowner!
The KCLB is excited to announce the sale of our latest newly renovated and affordable home, located at 149 Greenkill Avenue! This fully rehabbed 3-bedroom, 1-bath home features a new kitchen, bathroom and large, private backyard. We commenced renovations late last year and expect to complete construction in July.
“After many years of vacancy and neglect, we are thrilled to add 149 Greenkill to the list of comprehensively and beautifully renovated homes that the KCLB has returned to our community,” says Daniel Kanter, Board Chair of the KCLB. “This home is classic Kingston through-and-through, and no detail has been overlooked by our design team or our incredible crew from Maeda Contracting. It’s ready for its next 100 years and beyond.”
“We are excited to bring this opportunity to our community,” says Minya DeJohnette, Chair of the KCLB’s Communications & Community Engagement Committee. “Our marketing campaign will include direct outreach via local businesses, houses of worship and community events. We look forward to meeting everyone and discussing our work in person!”
This is the 4th home in our Affordable Homeownership PILOT program. Launched in 2020, the program is designed to purchase vacant properties from the City of Kingston for the full price of back taxes and transform them into the most well-designed affordable homes in our community! Selling properties this way is one of 4 Pathways we use to return properties to the tax rolls.
The household and income limits to purchase can be found in English and Spanish HERE. To take a virtual tour of the home as we near construction completion, check it out below!
To begin the process to apply to purchase, complete our interest form at kclb.org/homes.
You must complete this form by June 15, 2022 to be considered to purchase!
Attached is a sneak-peak of our ongoing construction activities at 149 Greenkill Avenue and 124 Franklin Street…we have been busy!
As of March 2022, construction at 149 Greenkill just passed the 50% complete mark, on budget and schedule!
124 Franklin has been gutted in preparation for a full renovation, and our demolition of a structurally unsound rear addition has been completed. In addition, we repaired the utility lines, so the home has water for the first time in over 20 years!
Overall, our activities on this last phase of our PILOT program is progressing as planned and on schedule. We expect to make a major announcement on our Greenkill home soon.
Stay tuned for more updates!
In our efforts to increase our capacity to continue to deliver the most well-designed, affordable homes for our community, the KCLB is pleased to announce that Kyle Cohen has joined us as a Development Project Manager!
Kyle will contribute to ongoing management of the entire portfolio of the KCLB’s real estate assets from acquisition through warranty. He will also research and secure funding and financing sources to support our affordable homeownership and other new KCLB programs.
Kyle has over five years of real estate analysis and project management experience. In 2021 he received a Masters in Urban Planning degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Kyle’s bio and contact information can be found HERE. Please feel free to welcome him to the KCLB!
UPDATE: our letter in support of the allocation of ARPA funds to the KCLB is HERE.
Great news: to continue to support the work of the KCLB, the Mayor has proposed awarding us $1.1MM of Federal Stimulus funding! We are very grateful for this opportunity to continue our work: https://kingston-ny.gov/news/?FeedID=1580
These funds would be used to directly fund our mission by offsetting our costs to purchase and rehab additional affordable homes for our community.
On Monday, March 21st at 7pm, the Common Council will hold a VIRTUAL ONLY public hearing for public comment on the Mayor’s proposal. Please contact your local Councilperson this week and voice your support of our work!
And, if you’d like to join the Council’s hearing on the 21st, the details are below:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87160108170?pwd=ZS9JN1NmNWdocDFOdXZDWndHR3V6QT09
Passcode: jf4S5KNJ
Phone +1 646 558 8656
Webinar ID: 871 6010 8170
Passcode: 70136170
Executive Director Michael Gilliard joined housing advocates in championing a historic $200 million budget proposal to address the housing crisis in New York’s upstate and rural communities.
The event took place on March 10 in Albany.
According to Senator Hinchey, this “plan is the first of its kind in the state budget to direct this scale of investment to increase the supply of affordable homes both for purchase and for rent in upstate New York.”
For more information, click here.
Just a quick note to let you know the KCLB is happy to announce several new ways to get involved in our work!
For our opportunities under the State’s new $25MM Legacy Cities Access Program, which provides funds for New York State Land Banks to rehab affordable homeownership opportunities (so we can continue our amazing work):
For our opportunities under our current affordable homeownership rehab homes that are under construction, we also have two opportunities:
Perhaps most exciting of all, we are now hiring a new member of our team. CLICK HERE to find out more about our Development Project Manager role!
Stay tuned for more updates…we have a ton of exciting work planned for 2022!
On behalf of all of us here at the Kingston City Land Bank, it is a pleasure to share with you this summary of some of our milestones in 2021.
We have made many great strides throughout this tumultuous year, but they all truly pale in comparison to having the first 3 families in our affordable homeownership program move into their new homes in time for the holidays. We completed this first phase of our pilot program on schedule, recently returning these long-vacant homes purchased from the City of Kingston for the full price of back-taxes to productive use.
With these sales, the properties were returned to the tax rolls, of course. More importantly, I believe, this milestone should be seen as a community-led source of pride for the future of our City. All 3 families, who are long-time Kingston residents, have moved into what we hope is a permanent place to call home for generations to come.
I am overwhelmingly proud to be part of such a scrappy, volunteer-led organization. My hope is the KCLB serves as a local beacon for the change that a few dedicated people can make when they decide to do so. We remain humble, take the work (but not ourselves!) seriously, and remain intentional in achieving realistic outcomes. Do yourself a favor and learn about our unique, talented, and growing team HERE.
We like to say that we build the most affordable, well-designed homes in our City. And we do. The concept of combining low-to-moderate first-time single-family homeownership with historic preservation is not a new one, but quality execution of this idea is indeed rare.
Because this is working, we received a lot of national (and even international) press this year, as folks recognized and celebrated what we were up to. We were thankful for their support of our model, but at the core: our business is local.
The commitment we have to our ongoing partnership with the Mayor and Council, without whose approval we would not have the opportunity to acquire properties and continue our work, is central to what we do. For this patient, necessary and enduring relationship with City Hall to keep our pipeline moving forward—rather than allowing speculative investors to purchase properties at auction or otherwise–we are very grateful.
However, the largest metric of our success has been, and will continue to be how you, the community of Kingston, think of what we are doing. Despite the current challenges in meeting face-to-face, in addition to our monthly public board meetings—generally held on the 4th Monday of each month via Zoom at 6:30pm—next year we will start holding regular public info sessions about our work. If conditions allow, we will probably also hold quarterly in-person meetings as well.
Please consider signing up for our mailing list HERE to become part of the conversation and be informed of the many opportunities we have planned next year…we need your input!
Unfortunately, living in what is suddenly and quite apparently the hottest real estate market in the United States is a recognition that many longtime residents may be forced out of our community, as housing prices and rents escalate dramatically.
Of course, identifying a problem does not mean we are the holistic experts to solve it. In addition to completing work on the final 2 homes in our pilot program, we were pleased earlier this year to launch our first community-led RFP for “as-is” properties, so that all of us at large can participate in the process.
In 2022, as we are able to purchase more properties from the City of Kingston, we will expand this program to provide as many opportunities as possible for community experts in affordable rental housing to open up new opportunities to stay in our city. To learn more about the 4 Pathways we use to return properties to the tax rolls, click HERE.
Also in 2022, our new Community Stewardship Program will allow us to directly connect with and pay directly for the time of community residents to amplify our message. This new program will seek to achieve a variety of community benefits to combat displacement, including providing first-time homeownership training.
Statewide, Albany has also recognized the value of the work of Land Banks by prioritizing the importance of our work in the State’s new 5-year housing plan. Substantively, this year the State has launched a new program to support our affordable housing rehab work, in partnership with M/WBE and BIPOC developer/contractors. This $25,000,000 entirely State-funded initiative will allow us to continue to place our current properties and future properties back on the tax rolls as affordable homes for our community, rather than opportunities for speculative investors.
Last month, we met our $30,000 fundraising goal to directly buy down the purchase price of the final 2 homes in our pilot program: 149 Greenkill and 124 Franklin, directly making them even more affordable for our community. Now, these homes are under construction. It appears you think we are on the right track, and we humbly thank you for that!
If you’d like to support our ongoing work in 2022 and beyond, please consider contributing to our Holiday Fundraising Drive, going on until the end of the year.
Thank you!
Sincerely and In Partnership,
Mike Gilliard
Executive Director
The Kingston City Land bank is pleased to announce that construction has started on 124 Franklin Street and 149 Greenkill Avenue. Both properties were acquired from the City of Kingston in 2021 for the full price of back taxes. Both properties have been vacant for decades.
In 2022, both homes will receive a full rehabilitation, including major interior and exterior renovation. Once complete, each home will be sold to households earning at or below 100% or less of AMI (area median income). Homes will be offered for sale via a public offering. Interested parties can sign up on our website now to be made aware when the homes are for sale: www.kclb.org/homes
Following the KCLB’s successful fundraising campaign in 2020, the purchase prices will be reduced by a total of $30,000. These donations will allow these well-designed, affordable homes to be even more affordable than originally envisioned. The KCLB expects to continue this direct-impact fundraising model in 2022, allowing donors to directly and immediately impact the results of our work. Please visit our donation page for more information: https://kingstoncitylandbank.org/donate/
Both homes are part of the KCLB’s Affordable Homeownership Pilot Program. Previous homes sold and renovated within this program include 174 Hasbrouck Avenue, 248 Main Street, and 64 Van Buren Street, which were also sold in November 2021 for affordable prices to three first-time home buyers.
The KCLB has many more exciting initiatives planned for our community in 2022! Sign up for our mailing list at kclb.org for updates and opportunities to participate in our work.
The Kingston City Land Bank (KCLB) is a 501c3 organization that was formed with the purpose of acquiring title to tax-foreclosed and other distressed properties in the City of Kingston, removing barriers to redevelopment and returning properties to the tax rolls. Its mission is to foster an equitable community where vacant or distressed properties are transformed into community assets that improve the quality of life for Kingston residents, stabilize and enhance neighborhoods, and create new pathways for social and economic development.
Media inquiries: secretary@kclb.org
On November 19, The Kingston City Land Bank celebrated the sales of 64 Van Buren Street, 248 Main Street, and 174 Hasbrouck Avenue with the new homeowners and members of the community. For more information about these sales, please see this fact sheet.
