After nearly three years of court battles, the vacancy study conducted by the City of Kingston, which underpinned the declaration of a housing emergency and ushered in a period of selective rent stabilization has been vindicated. On June 18, judges for the New York State Court of Appeals unanimously upheld lower-court rulings and handed a third-in-a-row loss to landlord law firm Belkin, Burdin and Goldman.
The judges concluded that the petitioners had “failed to meet their burden of establishing that the city’s vacancy rate finding does not rest on a reasonably reliable and relevant measure of the actual vacancy rate.”
The vacancy study overseen by city housing initiatives director Bartek Starodaj was successfully defended by corporation counsel Barbara Graves-Poller.
The ruling, which also took up the issue of two recommendations made by the rent guidelines, was nuanced. The judges thought the existence of an overcharge based upon a standard of fair market rent which did not exist when the rent was charged in the first place raised problems. Extending the statute of limitations appeared to butt heads with the due-process clause of the United States Constitution by “[expanding] the scope of owner liability significantly.”
The judges appeared to sidestep the issue of a rent guidelines board calling for a rent reduction. “These challenges to the rent adjustment guideline are not preserved and are therefore not properly before us,” they said.
The landlords in the future may have an opening to revisit the issue.
The ruling supporting the City of Kingston’s rental vacancy study means that any municipality in the state now has a blueprint hallowed by law and precedent to follow.
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