A supportive housing project just for women is finally being built in Newburgh after seven years of planning.

The 11-unit project is only part of local nonprofits' strategy to fight homelessness, and the bureaucracy is preventing them from keeping up with the need, nonprofit leaders said Wednesday.

"I slept in the police department last night in the lobby because I was out here sleeping in a vehicle and I was being harassed, said Newburgh resident Doreen Angell.

Angell, a domestic violence survivor and a client of Orange County Social Services, said that even as a single woman without pets, she struggles to find accommodations.

"I asked if I could stay on Route 211 at a motel," she said. "They wouldn't let me stay at the Imperial because they only rent to men, which I don't understand."

According to the 2024 Point in Time Survey, advocates counted 320 women in shelters and 30 women living on the streets of Orange County.

Anti-poverty nonprofit, the Regional Economic Community Action Program, is carrying out its plan to accommodate more housing-insecure women, though the pace is frustratingly slow.

RECAP just broke ground on Fresh Start Apartments on Carson Avenue.

The project will include 11 units for women affected by substance abuse and domestic violence.

The agency is using a state grant worth $4.9 million and a county grant of $900,000 to fund construction of the complex, which will include case management, counseling and job training all on site.

RECAP began planning the project in 2017, broke ground this week, and expects it to be complete by December 2025.

Unless state officials change their cumbersome, confusing grant procurement system, non-profits like RECAP will continue to take years for projects that private developers can build in months, RECAP Chief Operating Officer Michele McKeon said Wednesday.

McKeon said just to build one project like Fresh Start, the agency's staff has to slug away for years to round up all necessary grant funding, navigate the housing market, and win over neighbors and governments who have concerns about housing for certain homeless populations.

McKeon is lobbying the state to streamline the grant application process and scouting locations for future projects.

"We need communities who are housing-friendly," McKeon said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C., where she is lobbying federal officials for nonprofit funding. "How can we only build in Port Jervis, Middletown and Newburgh? What about Goshen? Can we build in Highlands?"

McKeon said the agency will begin accepting applications this summer for units at Fresh Start.

She expects several hundred applications, which is another sign to McKeon that such projects are desperately needed and must be finished more quickly to effect significant change.