Affordable housing organizations get $3 million funding

COLUMBIA COUNTY —  During a visit last week to a home built by Columbia County Habitat for Humanity, New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Assemblymember Didi Barrett announced $3 million in funding for affordable housing in Columbia and Dutchess counties.

Made possible by a Capital Project Grant, the funding includes $1.5 million each for Columbia County Habitat for Humanity in order to enable first-time homebuyers to access affordable homes and Poughkeepsie-based Hudson River Housing to develop affordable rental units. A significant amount of the funding is earmarked for the City of Hudson, which has faced an exacerbated affordable housing crisis due to COVID-19.

“I welcomed Speaker Heastie to our district as part of his annual statewide tour,” said Barrett. “I wanted the Speaker to understand the particular obstacles we face here in our region that make the development of new affordable housing challenging, including the smaller scale of our communities, the local zoning restrictions, the lack of/or inadequate water and sewer infrastructure, the workforce shortages and the rising cost of construction.”

The home that Barrett and Heastie visited is owned by  Iftakher Chowdury and Shanaj Begum and is a “passive house,” the design and construction of which utilizes framing and insulation techniques that result in a 90% reduction in external energy consumption.