Hopes for rent regulation in Kingston are, for the time being, dashed after a study determined that the city’s rental vacancy rate is too high to declare a “housing emergency” under the state’s Emergency Tenants Protection Act.
Instead, Mayor Steve Noble this week asked city lawmakers to consider legislation like regulation of short-term rentals and an affordable housing mandate for new residential construction.
The ETPA, first passed in 1974, was renewed by state lawmakers last year and amended to allow, for the first time, upstate communities to opt in to its provisions. Under the ETPA, communities with a vacancy rate of less than 5 percent can declare a rental housing emergency. Once that happens a county-appointed board has the power to impose caps on annual rent increases at all eligible properties — residential buildings of six units or more built before 1974. Mayor Steve Noble and leaders of the Common Council expressed support for rent stabilization and it was taken for granted that the city would qualify based on its vacancy rate.
But that expectation was upended on Wednesday, Feb. 19 when the Common Council’s Laws & Rules Committee belatedly received the results of a vacancy study commissioned in November. The survey, conducted by Rochester-based firm CGR, identified 82 properties with 1,793 units that met the ETPA eligibility criteria. Using site visits, phone calls and surveys mailed to property owners, the CGR study estimated the vacancy rate in ETPA eligible properties at 6.7 percent. The CGR report notes that 21 properties with 193 units did not respond to the survey. But, the report reads, even if those properties were counted as fully occupied, the vacancy rate would come it at 5.7 percent — still above the threshold to declare a housing emergency.
The report also notes that the survey, especially of larger apartment complexes, relied almost entirely on vacancy rates self-reported by property owners.
“There were few practical ways to verify figures for larger apartment complexes,” the CGR report reads. “The net vacancy rate provided here should be considered an estimate, developed using the most complete and accurate data available.”
News that the city would not be able to implement rent stabilization came as a bitter blow to tenants who lament what they see as a spiraling affordability crisis in the city. At Wednesday’s committee meetings, residents of large apartment complexes spoke about displaced neighbors, major rent increases in the months since Albany lawmakers passed the ETPA and their fears that they would be forced to abandon the city entirely if action was not taken to address the issue.
“You want to hear story after story after story,” said Juanita Velazquez-Amador, a co-founder of the Kingston Tenants Union. “I don’t know how many times we need to tell you that we are hurting, the life is draining out of Kingston.”
Real estate interests, meanwhile, warned that the rent regulation threatened to make the affordability crisis worse by discouraging the development of new housing and investment in maintenance and upgrades of existing properties. Realtor Nan Potter asked the council seek input from property owners and investors before passing laws to regulate the market.
“There is a right path and it can be the right path for everybody,” said Potter. “We have so much good going on in the city right now, we don’t want to discourage investors.”
Mayor Steve Noble attended the meeting and expressed disappointment with the survey results. But, Noble added, there are other things the council can do to respond to the issue. The mayor called for a change in the city’s landlord registration law to increase inspections of residential units from every two years to annually. Noble said more frequent inspections would allow the city to independently monitor vacancy rates — with an eye towards declaring a housing emergency if they fell below 5 percent — while also improving the quality of rental housing citywide.
Noble also called on the council to enact regulation of short-term Airbnb-style rentals. The surge in short-term rentals has been blamed for hiking housing costs by throttling the city’s stock of rental housing available to full-time residents. Another proposal would require landlords to pay for alternative accommodations if tenants are required to leave their apartments because they have been deemed uninhabitable because of a health and safety issue. Noble’s final proposal called on the council to amend the zoning code to mandate that new residential projects set aside at least 10 percent of their units for affordable housing.
“We’re all frustrated,” said Noble. “If we had a silver bullet for this, we would have enacted it several years ago when this was coming up.”
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