Dozens benefit from workforce program
Denise Lahey’s roots in Beacon are decades deep.
Her grandfather, Dennis Lahey, served 62 years with the Beacon Fire Department; her father, Dennis Lahey Jr., is the assistant chief and her sister, Kari, became the city’s first full-time female firefighter in 2020.
However, those ties to the city were no match for the rental prices Lahey faced in 2019, when a relationship ended, along with half the rent for the two-bedroom unit she shared at Hudson View with her then-boyfriend and son.
There were plenty of good reasons to stay in Beacon, she said: keeping her son in the city’s schools and staying close to her family and job as a mail carrier in White Plains rather than moving farther away to Poughkeepsie or Wappingers.
“I was stuck,” said Lahey. “Luckily, this happened.”
What happened: a $1,400-a-month one-bedroom found through Beacon’s Workforce Housing Program, which has rescued dozens of residents from rental purgatory: They earn what are generally considered to be decent salaries, but too little to comfortably afford rents that have skyrocketed in Beacon, particularly since the pandemic fomented a wave of transplants from New York City.
Adopted by the City Council in 2017 as a revision to Beacon’s affordable housing law, the program requires new housing developments with 10 or more rental units to set aside 10 percent at below-market rates for households earning up to 90 percent of the Dutchess County median household income, which is about $97,000 annually. For condos and townhouses for sale, it’s up to 110 percent of the median income.
Priority is given to volunteer emergency responders who have served five years or longer, as well as municipal and school district employees. Hudson River Housing manages the list of people who have been approved for the program, which so far has created 46 units for rent and nine condos and townhouses that have been purchased, said Chris White, Beacon’s city administrator.
Rents range from $1,412 to $2,809 depending on the complex, the size of the household and the number of bedrooms. Lahey’s apartment at the Beacon HIP Lofts, where a studio starts at $2,100, has “made everything easier,” she said. Her son, now a teenager, has the upstairs and its dedicated bathroom as his domain and Lahey has a bedroom and bathroom downstairs.
Amanda Caputo, Beacon’s clerk, pays $1,350 for a one-bedroom apartment at The Beacon at 445 Main St., which houses the Beacon Theater along with the rental units. The apartment is a launching pad for walks to work, the riverfront and Mount Beacon, or strolls along Main Street, where friends work.
“It’s helped me grow in my position and stay in the community,” she said.
Caputo and Lahey’s rents were calculated, based on Beacon’s guidelines and the area median income for Dutchess County, by Lashonda Denson, the director of homeownership and education for Hudson River Housing.
When units become available, Denson consults the list of people who have expressed interest and met the income guidelines. If the units are available, the applicants contact the property managers or landlords directly, she said.
People call Hudson River Housing daily looking for Beacon housing through the program, said Denson. “This is one of the few programs that offers some kind of reduction in the rent,” she said. “Some people have been waiting for a couple of years, and then it happens.”
White described the program as “critical to ensuring that new construction provides opportunities for those who cannot afford the escalating rental costs.” In addition to the HIP Lofts, and The Beacon, units exist at 7 Creek Drive, 344 Main, 121 Rombout Ave., The Arno beside Fishkill Creek and the Edgewater complex on the city’s waterfront.
Dozens of units are awaiting Planning Board approval or completing construction, said White. Such projects “help to ensure that the city remains home to people of all incomes and backgrounds,” he said.
Caputo, a SUNY New Paltz graduate, interned for the clerk’s office in 2018 before being hired that year as deputy clerk. She moved to the building department before being named clerk in 2023. After graduating, she lived with family in the area while searching for a rental. She learned about the workforce program on the City of Beacon’s website.
“I wanted to be local — not have a crazy commute — and living in Beacon would be ideal,” she said.
After being accepted, she waited a few months before a unit became available at 445 Main St. She moved in May 2020, amid the pandemic, just as people from New York City began to flee to the Hudson Valley, causing a spike in housing costs.
Caputo said she sometimes thinks about “breaking that tipping point,” where she makes too much to stay in the workforce program and has to find a market-rate unit in a city whose housing costs have increased dramatically.
“I’m not seeing anything that is at, below or anywhere near what I’m paying for rent right now — anywhere in the area,” she said.
Lahey also knows how much rents have risen in recent years. When the first unit she rented at the HIP Lofts, which lacked a separate bedroom, became too small for an adult and a teenager, she began searching for a larger apartment. One place she looked at was Hudson View. The rents had grown since she lived there, said Lahey.
She tells others about her luck, encouraging them to apply, even if there is a wait. “The option is there,” she said. “The faster you get on the list, the quicker you’ll get a place.”
In a city where renovated millhouses are now priced around $2 million, this is one solution which will certainly help folk of moderate means. Another would be if the old correctional facility was converted to senior and/or low-income housing for local people, instead of more luxury housing which only the wealthy can afford, and which will surely place an excessive burden on our infrastructure, roads, services and schools.