Residents urge state action on rent stabilization and social housing; council approves multiple budget and zoning resolutions

Dozens of Kingston residents urged the Common Council on April meeting night to support two state bills aimed at expanding rent stabilization and creating public social housing, and to cancel a planned local vacancy study; the council then approved a slate of budget, traffic and property resolutions.

Speakers at the public-comment portion repeatedly asked the council to pass resolutions backing the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act and legislation to create permanently affordable social housing in New York, and to cancel Kingston’s vacancy study that some speakers said could be used by landlords to strip local protections. "ETPA only covers around 20 of Kingston's rental housing stock, and Kingston has been the only upstate city to successfully opt in to rent stabilization," Ravan Ranga, political director for The Many, told the council. "The REST Act would allow municipalities to choose which sized buildings are covered ... and would allow municipalities to use publicly available data to opt in to ETPA instead of a costly vacancy study."

Why it matters: speakers said local rent protections and new state laws could expand coverage and reduce displacement. Naomi Dann, chief of staff at Housing Justice for All, said, "We do not need a vacancy study to know that we have a housing crisis." Several tenants and social-service workers described being rent burdened or serving clients who face homelessness; others argued building permanently affordable, publicly controlled housing is necessary because the private market…