New Paltz Mayor visits to guide senior seminar

John Palmer Features Editor

Students in Pinar Batur’s Urban Studies senior seminar “Urban Praxis” know what it takes to be an active participant in the processes of a city. They are currently working with Mayor of New Paltz James West in an attempt to bring affordable housing to that village. To help kick off the program, West was invited to Vassar last Thursday to discuss the issue of affordable housing. Students in the class were able to ask him questions about housing in New Paltz, so that later in the year they could come up with a solution.

“We need to come up with an economically sound plan that’s sustainable and environmentally aware,” West said at this event, which drew approximately 40 people.

Emily Goldstein ’05, a member of the Urban Studies class, said, “The idea is that we’re going to try to come up with a plan on how New Paltz can solve its affordable housing problem.”

New Paltz’s current problem is that of “student” housing. Citizens of New Paltz make, on average, $21,747 a year, half of the average of New York State. The median age of New Paltz’s 6,034 citizens is 22, a reflection of those statistics, since many are students attending SUNY New Paltz or recently graduated.

The problem in New Paltz is that the cost of housing has increased dramatically in the last decade—especially post-9/11. “In the nine years I’ve been in New Paltz, the cost of housing has tripled,” West explained. Moreover, the university itself has become one of the more competitive SUNY schools, so housing in the area is in high demand.

Currently, New Paltz does not have a homeless rate to speak of. The main problem is the cost of housing. West explained that many who live in New Paltz moved away because of the high cost of housing. “I want housing that’s affordable to people born and raised in New Paltz,” he said.

Students asked a number of different questions, from the possibility of private-public partnerships to the possibility of rezoning areas of New Paltz to mix public and private use. West said that New Paltz was unable to undertake many projects because there was little funding from state and federal programs. State funding would help SUNY New Paltz build additional dorms; federal funding would allow new residential complexes. “There’s simply not enough money from Washington,” he said. “If the state legislature would fund schools a fraction of the amount they fund prisons, we’d have all the housing we need.”

Goldstein said this was the first step in the project with West that aims “to come up with ideas that [New Paltz] can do and that their town council can take.”