Earlier this year the city of Kingston became the first upstate municipality to opt into rent stabilization. With the economy sputtering and housing costs increasing, advocates are pushing to enact rent reductions.
The Kingston Rent Guidelines Board held the first of two public hearings Tuesday as tenants, elected officials, and advocates stepped up calls for a rent reduction.
Prior to the meeting, housing activist group For the Many held a press conference outside Kingston City Hall. Mayor Steve Noble, a Democrat, addressed the gathering.
“When we looked at our housing situation a few years ago, we recognized that we had a couple of different issues," Noble said. "One, no one had built housing in Kingston in a really long time. Two, we saw people taking advantage of that by creating this emergency by raising rents to levels that we had never seen before in Kingston. A 3% increase is something that we can see once in a while. A 5% increase would mean that, you know maybe a big investment was made in that property to be able to fix a tenant’s apartment. A 15, a 30%, a 40% rent increase that some of our tenants saw over the last two years, is completely inappropriate.”
Noble says the rent guidelines board needs to hear the tenants’ stories.
Kingston’s RGB was created by the city in July after a declared housing emergency, which opted the city into the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974, creating the first RGB north of Rockland County.
In November, it will set rents for over 1,200 apartments (across 64 buildings of six or more units built before 1974). It includes some of the largest apartment complexes in Kingston, including Stony Run, Fairview Gardens, Dutch Village, and Spring Brook Village.
Tenants from the Stony Run apartment complex claimed their new landlord, Aker Companies of Beacon,has made outrageous rent hikes and refused to do basic repairs.
For The Many tweeted video featuring a woman identified only as "Janice," a tenant at the Stony Run. She says the day after signing her lease, the owners told her they couldn't afford to repair her apartment. She adds rent was increased by 11% when she renewed her lease.
"It was $1300 and went up to $1,443," Janice said.
Most who gave public comment at the board hearing were tenants or tenant advocates.
Chanel Marshall testified that a new owner just bought her apartment complex at 58 Fair Street and is evicting all tenants.
"So now I have two kids and nowhere to go," said Marshall. "I don't think that is totally fair, how people are coming up here and buying our properties and just saying ‘get out,’ when our families don't have nowhere to go."
WAMC has requested comment from Aker and Stony Run.
The amount of any rent decrease has not yet been decided. Activists are asking for at least a two-year lookback period, which would give tenants a one-time challenge to current rents if they were unjustly increased in the last two years. Landlords say they're feeling the pinch of rising taxes and utility bills.
Mike Caslin owns five properties and says he hasn't taken profit in four years.
"Our heating oil bill just in case, you want a data point, just came in. $5.89 a gallon up from $1.89 three months ago," said Caslin. "That's not 8% inflation. That's nearly 300%. So as we are here today, and let's not fight each other, okay? Let's understand that some of the largest costs that property owners have are taxes. The City of Kingston wants a 7.3% increase on a $50 million budget. The school system with a $196 million budget, they got a 4.5% increase, and Ulster County has a $379 million budget."
Caslin suggests creating a trust fund that could benefit both tenants and landlords.
A second public hearing is scheduled before the Rent Guidelines Board is set to vote. It will be at Kingston Library on November 5th at noon.
