Rent control not a good fit in village, New Paltz trustees decide

After conducting a vacancy study in accordance with state law, the trustees and mayor in New Paltz have agreed that declaring a housing emergency wouldn’t do very much to address the crisis in the village. The number of rental units that would become subject to rent control under an emergency is simply too small to make a difference, because the state law in question was written with New York City in mind. 

The decision did not appear to be taken lightly by anyone at the table. The village has a 2.7% vacancy rate according to the study results, which is well below the five-percent threshold despite the fact that the data were reported by building managers and not independently verified. The issue is the fact that the only eligible buildings were those constructed before 1974, and with at least six rental units. While the price of college dorms holds significant sway over rental prices in the community, those rooms are exempt from the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, according to deputy mayor Alex Wojcik. Without those college rental units in the equation, roughly 20% of apartments would be subject to the rent guidelines board, if a housing emergency was to be declared. 

Mayor Tim Rogers has long been skeptical that those archaic rules would give New Paltz renters much benefit. “This is a very blunt instrument that is probably not useful for a community like ours,” the mayor said. One of the reasons why an unreasonable rent increase law has also been considered was to address the shortcomings in the Emergency Tenant Protection Act. “We need to lobby for better tools.” 

Instead of relying on this “very inorganic process” to get rents back in line with what’s affordable for most residents, Rogers instead believes that the large number of new units that could be approved and built in the next couple of years is the better focus. While a good many of those are expected to be rented by students and senior citizens, the mayor explained that there is a well documented “filtering effect” that should result in relief across the rental market. If this effect works as expected, students might choose to live in New Paltz Apartments on the far side of campus from the business and bar district, resulting in demand for other rental properties to become lower. University officials have claimed that there are no plans to increase enrollment. If the demand drops because the number of students remains level, that could open up more housing for non-students. 

Unreasonable rent law on hold

Having listened carefully to a good number of landlords and tenants and people who might be tenants in New Paltz if they could afford to live in the village, trustees have closed the public hearing on a proposed unreasonable rent increase law, and placed that specific idea on hold pending court decisions which could impact its relevance. However, they haven’t abandoned support of tenants altogether. 

If this law had been passed, tenants who are notified of a rent increase that they feel is unreasonable could challenge it, and to enforce the new rent the landlord would have to go to court. Trustees discussed how, in a certain sense, that’s already the law of the land. Alex Wojcik noted that it’s the opinion of the attorney general for the state that if a tenant does not sign a renewal lease, and keeps paying the same rent as before, then the landlord’s only recourse would be to bring that tenant to court in an eviction proceeding. The similarity is that it would remain the landlord’s responsibility to hire an attorney and take the tenant to court. The difference is that the proposed village ordinance would specifically have protected the tenant from being evicted for withholding the amount of the rent increase, as opposed to making eviction the only way to get the dispute into court. 

Trustees agree that two factors contribute to better results for renters: understanding tenants’ rights, and communicating with landlords. They briefly discussed the idea of requiring landlords to provide the reasons for a rent increase along with that notice. It wouldn’t necessarily mean that the reasons are truthful or accurate, but it suggested that honesty is more common than dishonesty and that the information might prompt the types of conversations that could resolve these issues without the intervention of judges or other public officials.