Samadhi Board President Kathy Nolan, who is also an Ulster County legislator, says the closure stems from a breakdown of communication with the Ulster County Department of Social Services. The Refuge is a former motel with nearly 30 units, and Ulster County has been reimbursing motels for housing individuals with DSS cases.
As it took people in and navigated that process, Nolan says Samadhi thought it had more time and flexibility to get all the required DSS paperwork in for each individual — but it didn’t. A lot of the reimbursements it billed the county for were ultimately denied.
“From the DSS side, they did feel that they were working with us. They felt that they were clear," says Nolan. "We thought that it was still in process. And so we accumulated over $400,000 in what we were thinking of as accounts receivable. We thought we would get payment for most of those, and they informed us that we would get payment for almost none of those.”
Nolan says Samadhi has laid off staff at the Refuge, and all 20 occupants have to relocate. As of Wednesday, Nolan says three people have been relocated to other motels by DSS.
DSS says it has been clear in how its reimbursement process works, and it’s the same for every emergency shelter in the county. DSS Commissioner Michael Iapoce says his office can only reimburse for individuals with open, approved emergency housing cases with DSS. He says shelters get regular statements showing who they’re receiving money for.
“In this case, Samadhi would have been receiving information about the persons that they were accommodating, that they were getting payment for," says Iapoce. "Now, in the event that they’re accommodating someone who does not have an emergency housing case that’s open, that person needs to be referred to start an application to be able to be deemed if they’re eligible or not.”
Samadhi, which practices a harm reduction model in its approach to substance abuse, grew rapidly after its launch in Kingston in 2019. By 2023, it had nearly $800,000 in contracts with Ulster County. Samadhi also operates two outpatient clinics in Kingston and a mobile unit.
Nolan says managing that growth proved difficult, however, and now the future of Samadhi is in question.
“We’re very strained financially, and it’s not clear which of these programs we’re going to be able to continue," she says.
Ulster County froze its contracts with Samadhi last year after it received a qualified opinion on its audit for 2022. Ulster County Comptroller March Gallagher detailed her decision in a recent report analyzing Samadhi’s bank statements from 2023, identifying more than $190,000 in suspicious withdrawals that she says pose “serious financial and governance risks for taxpayer funds.” Gallagher relayed her report to local, state, and federal law enforcement.
“As far as I’m concerned, the case is closed with Ulster County, meaning we will not be making payments or contract approvals for this agency going forward," said Gallagher. "And I do not expect them to be coming to the county for any additional contracts.”
Samadhi Executive Director David McNamara told WAMC at the time that Gallagher’s report was politically motivated and working with incomplete data. He said Samadhi was still working on its official audit for 2023, and that a lot of the concerns Gallagher raised could be explained.
Nolan say Samadhi had already spent more than $100,000 when its contracts were frozen, and whether it gets that money back could depend on the quality of its next audit, which she expects will be out by the end of the month. Add in the remaining contract funds it lost in the freeze, and the reimbursements it didn’t get at the Refuge, and Nolan says Samadhi is out more than $1 million that it had budgeted for.
She says the closure of the Refuge is disappointing. She still believes the work it did was important. In the roughly two years it was open, Nolan says there were no overdose deaths at the Refuge.
"We had been doing something important," says Nolan. "What we hadn’t been doing was doing something important in a sustainable way.”
