The study conducted by Kingston’s Office of Housing Initiatives between April and June finds the net vacancy rate for market-rate apartments and subsidized units remains low, at just over two percent. But the vacancy rate for properties that are rent-stabilized under New York’s Emergency Tenant Protection Act rose to more than seven percent.
The ETPA generally applies to buildings built before 1974 with more than six units. In order to opt into rent stabilization under the ETPA, a city must declare a housing emergency when the vacancy rate for those units is under 5 percent.
Bartek Starodaj, director of housing initiatives, says it appears the high demand for housing in Kingston has cooled slightly since the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think it’s also worth pointing out, however, that the numbers still show that there’s an affordability crisis here in Kingston and the broader area, in terms of the rent and home prices continuing to increase," he adds.
In a statement Wednesday, Kingston Mayor Steve Noble called on the Common Council to conduct its own legislative review of the survey. The Democrat adds, “While we recognize that housing is still a very challenging issue, we hope that some of the City’s many housing efforts are starting to relieve the housing pressures. And we will continue to advocate for our tenants across the community.”
Kingston first opted into rent stabilization in 2022, and it’s still the only upstate municipality where rent control has stuck. Vacancy studies in Newburgh and Poughkeepsie were challenged by landlord groups and overturned in court. Kingston’s 2022 study was challenged as well, but the New York State Court of Appeals ruled to uphold those findings in June.
Richard Lanzarone, executive director of the group Housing Providers of New York State — formerly the Hudson Valley Property Owners Association — says he’s pleased with the survey.
"The results are consistent with other Hudson Valley studies," he notes. "It's also consistent with the Hudson Valley Property Owners Association's study of 2022, which was discounted."
Tenants’ advocates are blasting the study. In a statement, Jenna Goldstein, an organizer with For the Many, blamed the higher vacancy rate on “landlord manipulation,” adding, “The only reason the vacancy rate is above five percent for the surveyed ETPA buildings is because of bad-faith landlords’ manipulation, collusion with one another, and warehousing of units — falsely claiming some units are vacant when they are not.”
Brahvan Ranga, the group’s political director, says the Common Council should reject the study.
"This study can be rejected by the Common Council — which the Common Council needs to do to keep people in their homes," he says. "It's part of a larger pattern of a few bad-faith landlords trying to manipulate the whole process."
State Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, a Democrat from the 103rd District, says the study shows that the current process to opt in to rent stabilization is "completely arbitrary and broken.” Shrestha and State Senator Brian Kavanagh have been pushing for passage of the REST Act, which would allow municipalities to opt in using publicly-available data, like eviction rates, instead of vacancy studies.
"When you ask New Yorkers, 'Are we having a housing crisis?' they don't say, 'Well, we have to measure the vacancy rate and determine that it's under 5 percent, and then we'll know whether we have a housing crisis,'" Kavanagh says. "So this is mostly about modernizing the standard and recognizing that local governments make choices based on a variety of figures all the time."
Starodaj notes that Kingston’s vacancy rate varied widely among different types of ETPA-regulated buildings. Larger buildings with more than 22 units, for example, had a net vacancy rate of just 3.7 percent. To that point, he says it’s possible the Common Council could simply change the parameters of its rent stabilization, rather than do away with it completely.
“They could just change the class that the housing emergency applies to," he explains. "This will be a legislative process that will be followed in the coming weeks and months.”
That’s an idea that Lanzarone objects to: he says there are only five rent-stabilized buildings in Kingston with more than 22 units.
Starodaj plans to present the survey to the Common Council’s Laws and Rules Committee during its meeting on August 20 at City Hall.
