Poll: The rising cost of rent

Rents are increasing across Ulster County.

Data from the county’s annual housing affordability survey in 2017, the last available year, show that average rents in Ulster County have risen by 55.8 percent since 2002, far outpacing wage increases. The survey also showed that more than half of Ulster County renters are “housing cost-burdened,” meaning that they pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing. The study found that 55.1 percent of county residents qualified as rent-burdened while nearly 30 percent spent more than half of their income on rent placing them in the category of “severely cost-burdened.”

As a result, some local residents have called for government action. In Kingston, that is expected to take the form of rent-control legislation, which allow rents to be capped at a cost in line with what local people can afford, protecting residents from being displaced due to a hot housing market. But opponents of rent control say it distorts the market, driving up costs of unregulated units, chilling the market for new construction and causing landlords to neglect their properties due to lack of profits and competition.