ELLENVILLE- Ulster County residents who opt not to be vaccinated against Covid-19 will be relocated to Ellenville, according to a joint press release from the Ulster County Health Department and Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink,” said County Executive Ryan K. Patrick. “Those who decide not to receive these safe and effective vaccines can’t be allowed to circulate among the productive members of society. Therefore, we have made the choice to relocate them to Ellenville.”
Patrick said residents will receive housing vouchers that will enable them to choose from a number of different options among Ellenville’s housing stock, which include decrepit bungalows, foul-smelling efficiencies, and dilapidated mobile homes.
Shayla McMahon, president of the Hudson Valley Realtors Alliance, said the program will free up valuable housing stock in places like Kingston and Woodstock. “Property owners and realtors been making a killing in this red hot market, often selling homes for double what they were worth just a few years ago, and evicting low-value renters and replacing them with much more desirable short-term guests,” said McMahon. “Unfortunately, this has led to misplaced criticism over ‘gentrification’ and ‘displacement,’ which has elicited some misguided empathy because it’s perceived that these residents are being forced out against their will. That’s why this is program is so great: The vaccine-skeptical residents — who are disproportionately of low socioeconomic status, that segment of America that has been screwed over and lied to repeatedly by elites who claimed to have their interests in mind but were really transferring vast amounts of wealth to themselves and their families for at least four decades — are carrying that distrust over to the worldwide vaccination effort, and so by making this choice, they are, in effect, self-evicting!”
Related:
Ellenville Manages to Avoid Scourge of Gentrification
