For twelve years, Your Business has built and stewarded affordable housing across the Hudson Valley — apartments and homes held permanently in community trust, sold or rented at half the regional median, never to be flipped, refinanced, or removed from the housing pool.
Affordable housing isn't a market problem with a market solution. It's a stewardship problem — and stewardship requires permanence. Your Business holds homes the way a land trust holds farmland: not as inventory, but as a promise.
Direct construction costs on the homes we build and the older homes we restore. Lumber, labor, plumbing, the roof.
Buying the land into the community land trust, where it stays permanently — never resold to private developers.
Homeownership counseling, financial literacy, and the ongoing relationship with the families who live in the homes.
Salaries for our seven staff members, rent, accounting, the website, and the cost of being a transparent organization.
Maria and Diego Mendez had been priced out of Beacon, where Maria's parents had lived for forty years. They'd been driving 40 minutes to visit. We built them a 3-bed, sold to them at 48% of regional median, with a permanent affordability covenant.
Henry Wilkins, 78, had lived in the same New Paltz cottage since 1981. The roof was failing, the heating system was thirty years old, and he was facing the choice between repair he couldn't afford and a sale he didn't want. We bought into the home, rehabbed it, and granted him a lifetime tenancy.
An eight-unit building in midtown Kingston was about to be flipped to a private investor. We bought it, brought it under the trust, and renewed every existing tenant's lease at the same rent, in perpetuity. The building stays affordable forever.
Every dollar contributed before April 30 is matched two-to-one by the Holcombe Family Foundation. The four tiers below tell you exactly what your gift accomplishes — these aren't symbolic numbers.
We run open build days the second Saturday of every month, plus quarterly skilled-trades days for the experienced. No experience needed, no minimum hours required. Tell us your name and we'll send you a calendar.
If you have skilled-trades experience — carpentry, plumbing, electrical, masonry — there's a separate roster, and you'll be paired with our site lead.
Founding ED · Twelve years of permanent housing work, two of those without a salary because the org couldn't afford one yet.
Twenty-eight years in residential construction across the Hudson Valley. Our first hire after Eleanor.
HUD-certified housing counselor. Manages the long-term relationship with every Your Business family.
Architect, Hudson Valley resident, Your Business board member since 2018. Lives in a Your Business home in Beacon.