Kingston landlord Ben Seldon appeared before the Zoning Board of Appeals on January 10 in response to a code violation. He was seeking an area variance for his 21-unit apartment building at 79-83 Green Street.
He hadn’t applied for the required permits from the city to do so. Seldon acknowledged increasing the number of boarding-house units in his building by three by having a contractor partition some existing rooms with framed-out drywall.
Boarding house units are single-room occupancy rental units, also known as SROs, lacking a kitchen or bathroom. Bathrooms are usually provided down the hall. Communal kitchens may or may not be provided.
Seldon struggled to recall when he bought the building, prompting skepticism from ZBA member Junior Tampone.
“Can I be candid?” offered Seldon. “I have a lot of buildings.”
Board chair Brian Cafferty took over.
“The question that I want a clarification [from] Mr. Seldon,” said Cafferty, “is when you made these changes were you aware it was something that required a building permit?”
“I had a feeling,” said Seldon. “It definitely — Was I aware? I don’t know, I had a feeling — I contacted the city eventually, the point is, the layup for this …”
“How many buildings do you own?” interrupted Cafferty.
“I’m not counting buildings,” Seldon answered.
“Can we just agree that your mindset was that you had the [workers] there. You probably knew you needed a permit. You figured, ‘I’ll get the work done and then I’ll beg for forgiveness?” asked Cafferty.
Seldon agreed to withdraw his application rather than risk the judgment of the zoning board and be unable to revisit his request.
The board members had explained that what Seldon was seeking was not an area variance, but a use variance, an application with the highest bar to clear. Seldon would have to demonstrate that without these three units he would not make “a reasonable rate of return” on the building.
“It’s not the responsibility of the city to bend our land-use code to what might be better to your advantage,” explained Cafferty.
Built before 1974 and containing more than six units, Seldon’s building is one of 63 in the City of Kingston covered by the Emergency Tenant Protection Act triggered by Kingston’s housing emergency declaration in August 2022.
The building is subject to the rent regulations recommended by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board. Changes to the building must also be cleared with the State Department of Housing and Community Renewal, of which Seldon claimed to be unaware.
Seldon’s building, owned by Yukon LLC, a limited liability company with a Brooklyn address, failed to register during Kingston’s rental unit vacancy survey. Yukon is one of eleven plaintiffs currently suing the City of Kingston in an attempt to invalidate the rental vacancy study and dissolve the rental guidelines board.
Thwarted by Supreme Court justice David Gandin last February, plaintiffs appealed that decision. Kingston corporation counsel Barbara Graves-Poller is scheduled to argue the city’s case in front of a five-member appellate court on Friday, January 19.
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