Homeless Shelter Operator Delivers Urgent Message to City of Saratoga Springs
Adelphi Street shelter, operated by RISE, on May 6, 2025. RISE’s main office – where a new Homebase Therapeutic Community Center is being developed, may be seen in the distance on Union Street. That building will not have shelter/bed capabilities. Photo by Thomas Dimopoulos.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — The operator of the city-based 24/7 low barrier homeless shelter delivered what it called “an urgent message on the future” to City Hall this week: without a city commitment to fund shelter operations through 2026, the agency would cease shelter operations with an anticipated closure date on June 3.
Following up on its two-page letter addressed to the City Council dated and signed by RISE Housing and Support Services Executive Director Sybil Newell on April 29, members of the nonprofit housing agency showed up in numbers at City Hall during this week’s meeting to deliver their message in person.
“We want to ensure the low barrier we’ve worked on so hard on for the past couple of years remains open long enough to find a permanent solution, so we don’t end up back at square one,” Newell said during the night of the May 6 council meeting.
“We are funded through the end of December 2025. However, for the past two years we’ve really had to scrape and struggle to get funding committed every year and that has left us in complete limbo close to at the end of our contract, every year,” Newell said. “We are simply asking them to commit to funding us through the end of next year (2026) so we aren’t scrambling and scraping again in a few months, and we can really get some momentum behind finding a permanent solution.”
Some of the council members were admittedly “caught off guard by the letter,” and after lengthy discussion during its meeting seemed to come to a consensus to revisit the issue more fully during its next meeting on May 20.
RISE has operated the Adelphi Street low-barrier shelter since 2022 as an emergency response to visible homelessness in Saratoga. The shelter currently serves more than 30 people who cannot access traditional shelters due to mental health or substance use challenges. The June 3 date cited as potential closure precedes by one day the start of the highly anticipated Belmont Festival week in Saratoga Springs and the closure would result in the near three dozen people RISE serves without its serviceable shelter.
“We want to bring public attention to this issue at the most salient point in the year,” Newell said. “Unfortunately, on December 31, nobody’s paying attention to homelessness. That’s why we’re paying attention to this now.”
The Adelphi Street shelter, local just of South Broadway, first opened as a winter-season Code Blue shelter operated by Shelters of Saratoga in winter 2019-20, evolving into Saratoga Springs’ first low barrier year-round facility when RISE assumed operations in 2023. Local developer Sonny Bonacio secured a temporary lease on the property, renovated the building, and provided it rent-free to RISE on a temporary basis. That time frame is soon coming to conclusion.
The current cost of operating the low barrier shelter is approximately $42,000 per month, or a half-million dollars per year, which includes staffing, utilities, meals and additional support services. “That amounts to about $45 per day per person, year-round, and that’s if we serve 30 people,” said Newell, adding that the number of people served is often higher and is currently at 35. The city of Saratoga Springs is funding the approximate $500,000 costs through the end of this calendar year.
“The owner of 4 Adelphi Street, Peter Kodogiannis, has graciously allowed us to use that space for the low-barrier shelter, and (previously) allowed the city to use that space for Code Blue. He is not pleased that a solution has not been found yet,” Newell said. “He called me the other day wondering when our shelter will be leaving and about how much progress the city and the county have made toward finding a permanent solution. I was not able to give him that answer. So also on behalf of him, I’m here speaking and trying to put pressure on the city and the county to come up with the solution so that isn’t put in an impossible situation where he has to put a homeless shelter out on the street to get his building back.”
Saratoga County recently purchased a 1.4-acre parcel at 96 -116 Ballston Ave. (Route 50) in Saratoga Springs for $3 million as the future location of a permanent Code Blue homeless shelter. “Code Blue” is strictly a cold-weather seasonal shelter and does not address year-round homelessness. Additionally, the county has strongly maintained that it has no willingness to operate as a low barrier facility.
Whether dialogue between the city, shelter operators, and the county will now become heightened remains to be seen, although there appears a desire among some to do so.
“While I can only speak for myself as a county supervisor, I would like to see the county get more involved,” said Michele Madigan, who represents the city of Saratoga Springs at the county board. “I think it would be beneficial for RISE to educate the supervisors on what a low barrier shelter is.”
“With the buying of the property for Code Blue, I think it gives us the perfect opportunity to locate all of these services in one location if we can just get the county on board,” Newell said.