KINGSTON UNDER CONTROL?
New state law, possible local impact addressed at forum that draws 30
KINGSTON, N.Y. >> About 30 people attended a forum Tuesday at the Albany Avenue office of state Assemblyman Kevin Cahill to hear about New York’s Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019.
Cahill, D-Kingston, gathered state and local officials and rentcontrol advocates to discuss the new law, which gives municipalities permission to regulate rent hikes. The city of Kingston is moving toward consideration of rent control.
The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act was approved by the state Legislature this past spring and signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Cahill, who represents the state’s 103rd Assembly District, said the lack of affordable housing has been “plaguing a lot of people” in Ulster County for a long time.
Until this year, he said, tenant protections in New York state existed only in New York City and Nassau, Suffolk, Rockland and Westchester counties.
“The rest of us were left to fend for ourselves,” Cahill said.
Still, the system appeared to be working, he said, until investors began buying up properties in Ulster County, most notably in the town of Ulster, “and decided to start ... changing the whole marketplace.”
The problem soon moved to communities like Esopus and the city of Kingston, “where we were affected mightily,” Cahill said.
The panel at Tuesday’s forum, in the Governor Clinton Building, included Kingston Mayor Steve Noble; Kingston Corporation Counsel Kevin Bryant; Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan; RuthAnne Visnauskas, commissioner of the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal; Assemblyman Steven Cymbrowitz, D-Brooklyn, who chairs the Assembly Housing Committee;
town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley; and Peter Frank, a landlord-tenant and foreclosure-prevention attorney for Legal Services of the Hudson Valley.
Regarding Kingston, Cahill and Noble said they’ve received reports of apparent rent hikes at the Dutch Village apartment complex on Washington Avenue that amounted to 40 percent.
Dutch Village LLC purchased the 138-unit complex at 500 Washington Ave. for about $12 million in 2018. The previous owner bought the property for $7.7 million in 2013.
Noble called the rent
hikes “a critical issue in Kingston.”
“If you don’t have a stable home, you aren’t going to be able to lead a stable life,” the mayor said.
Ryan said he would put a county housing counsel in place if the city passes a rent-control law, calling unprecedented rent hikes “a serious problem for seniors, working couples, young people and everybody in between.”
Quigley cited the Sunset Garden apartment complex in the town of Ulster, saying some tenants have been faced with “mold, vermin, sewage [backups and] leaking
water.” He said the town building inspector is aggressively targeting offending landlords with fines in an effort to stop violations.
Frank, who called his agency is “the voice of lowincome tenants,” said it has become increasingly difficult to get out-of-town landlords to even respond to phone calls. “I believe there is an emergency in Ulster County,” he said.
Asked by Cahill what tenants can do now, Visnauskas cited “anti-eviction protections for tenants” built into the new state law.
Noble encouraged tenants “to fight for their rights.”
Under the new state law, Frank said, “you have now more time to adjust to the landlord’s change in plans for your life.”
He cited, in particular, mandatory extensions allowing tenants time to challenge evictions.
“These things are enormously helpful for a tenant’s ability to stay in their home,” Frank said. “What we can’t do is change the landlord’s determination to change the financial arrangements with tenants. And so we look forward to ... [rent control] coming to Kingston so that we can keep tenants in their home .... ”