The City of Kingston’s defense of its declaration of a housing emergency continued Thursday, August 3.
Corporation counsel Barbara Graves-Poller filed a brief with the appellate division of the Supreme Court in the third district. Graves-Poller alleged that lawyers challenging the city’s rent regulations on appeal “wove together textually unfounded arguments and manipulated data to claim that the lower court misapplied a ‘controlling’ housing study standard.”
After losing the first round of its case in the courtroom of Ulster County Supreme Court judge David M. Gandin, a group of LLCs and a married couple appealed to the higher court on February 16. The appellants were led by Richard Lanzarone of the not-for-profit corporation Hudson Valley Property Owners Association, Inc.
At the heart of the case is Lanzarone’s effort to overthrow the findings of a rental housing study which found a vacancy rate of lower than five percent in the City of Kingston, thus triggering the declaration of a housing emergency by the common council and the formation of the rental guidelines board.
The end result was rent regulation of all apartments in buildings built before 1974, with six or more units. Petitioners have so far been represented by the law firm Belkin, Burden and Goldman, LLP, whose offices are across the street from Grand Central Terminal on 42nd Street.
Lanzarone’s lawyers will argue before the appellate court that Bartek Starodaj, the city’s director of housing initiatives, incorrectly conducted the rental housing vacancy-rate survey. If they are successful, the result would be the reversal of the emergency declaration, the dissolution of the rental guidelines board, and an end to rent regulation in the City of Kingston.
Previous to Kingston’s emergency declaration, stabilization as conferred by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA) was only available outside New York City in Nassau, Westchester and Rockland counties. The passage of the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act (HSTPA) in 2019 removed this geographic restriction. Kingston is the first municipality to declare a housing emergency since that passage.
Currently in Kingston, 63 buildings containing 1117 rental units are affected by what is officially referred to as rent stabilization.
Graves-Poller is joined by Sarah L. Rosenbluth representing the office of the state attorney general’s office, the state division of housing and community renewal, and the rental guidelines board, and by Marcie Kobak who represents a number of latecomers to the lawsuit, among them the housing activist group For the Many.
The reverberations of the appellate decision would be felt by other municipalities afflicted by low rental vacancy rates. If Kingston wins, they could perform their own vacancy-rate studies without fear of the litigation caused by entering previously uncharted legal territory.
While the appellate division is the court of last resort in the majority of cases, it is not the maximum court in New York State. If Lanzarone’s lawyers can convince two of the five judges to dissent from an opinion unfavorable to their client, he may be able receive permission to take the arguments further up the flagpole to the State Court of Appeals.
Anyone wishing to watch this legal drama unfold is in luck. Not only do appellate courts allow live audiences. but they also allow video cameras. Oral arguments are broadcast live, and can also be watched after the fact on the court website at https://ad4.nycourts.gov/go/live/
While the calendar date has not yet been set, oral arguments are anticipated to begin in six to eight weeks after the last brief is filed.
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