On Aug. 1, 2022, Mayor Steve Noble and the Kingston Common Council declared a housing emergency under the state Emergency Tenant Protection Act in response to the doubling of rents in Kingston over the past decade and the extreme difficulty of finding a place to live. As well, there was tenant turmoil at the Stony Run apartment complex, the largest in the city, which had new owners and bitter disputes over skyrocketing rents and terrible maintenance. The emergency declaration immediately froze rents for those living in buildings built before 1974 with six or more units, some 1,200 people in 66 buildings, or about 20 percent of the renters in Kingston.

Since then, reconsideration of buildings rehabbed since 1974 has reduced the number to roughly 980 people in 55 buildings. About half live in large complexes like Stony Run, the rest in a variety of smaller properties. On Nov. 9, 2022, the newly formed Kingston Rent Guidelines Board voted to reduce rents by 15 percent on any leases signed after Aug. 1, 2022. They even voted to claw back money from excessive rent hikes dating back to January 1st, 2019.

A triumph? Yes, on paper. And that rent freeze has has held strong, no small thing for these tenants. But the 15 percent rent reduction? Four years later has anyone received it? If so, they're hard to find. Welcome to the American Way: lawsuits, the glacial pace of the courts, the lumbering bureaucracy of the government and the plain old diffidence of Money towards the public, especially renters. We like to think we live in a democracy, but the rent guidelines board may have shown that their vote — our vote — only goes so far. Judges have more say.

In 2019, the New York State legislature, freed at last from a rump of Senate Democrats that often voted Republican, passed dramatic reform legislation for both climate and housing. The Emergency Tenant Protection Act (ETPA), which enables rent stabilization programs, was expanded from New York City, and Nassau, Westchester and Rockland counties, where dozens of municipalities have used it for years, to cities across the state, if they had a vacancy rate under 5 percent. In 2020, a Kingston survey found the rate of 6.7 percent. Two years later, it came in at 1.57 percent. Mayor Noble and the Common Council didn't hesitate to declare an emergency. (Kingston remains the only upstate community to do so. Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Albany and others have failed, often blocked by landlords in court.)

In cities where rent stabilization is well established, the rent guidelines boards typically approve small increases to allow for inflation. Not so in Kingston. Our board wanted to take a real bite out of the rapid runup in rents by sometimes-less-than-scrupulous landlords. But landlords didn't hesitate to fight back. The Hudson Valley Property Owners Association filed suit and quickly persuaded a judge to suspend the 15 percent rent reduction. Since then, we've seen plenty of legal actions, but very little money has yet changed hands.

The first court decision was split. Kingston had conducted a property vacancy survey and had the right to declare a housing emergency, but, the judge wrote, the rent guidelines board exceeded its authority by voting for the 15 percent rent cut. On appeal, though, the rent reduction was upheld as well. As of March 21, 2024, tenants began applying to the New York State agency that oversees rent stabilization to be refunded for the overpayments they'd made because their rents hadn't been reduced by 15 percent. On June 18, 2025, the top court in the state reaffirmed this decision, so the landlords had no more excuses or appeals. If they didn't refund these over payments, if they didn't offer new leases with the mandated 15 percent, they were in violation of the law, subjected to treble damages if sued by their tenants. Do they care? Very few apparently. Some have offered lower leases. None have refunded the overpayments.

Marcie Kapok of Legal Services of the Hudson Valley has been a key figure in the tenants’ fight. She represents about 175 tenants trying to their money back. Back in 2024, she helped about 100 file complaints with the New York State Division of Homes and Community Renewal, which oversees rent stabilization across the state. (Oddly enough, the City of Kingston, after declaring the housing emergency, has nothing to do with administering the program. They don't even know the numbers I've been trying to dig out.) Half of the tenants she represents are from Stony Run. They've received favorable rulings now subject to appeal by the landlords. The others have won their appeals, but still the landlords have the right to appeal to an outside court. After the June 2025 court decision, Kapok directed about 75 tenants from 12 buildings directly to state Supreme Court, where they await the next step in their proceedings. The landlords continue to argue that the 15 percent rent reduction doesn't stand legal muster; at this point, they would have to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court for review.

To be honest, I find all of this outrageous. Four years of waiting for these tenants promised dramatic relief to the rent crisis by their elected representatives. Why do judges always get to make the final decisions, operating on judges' timelines? But Marcie Kapok does her best to talk me down from my outrage. The emergency declaration in 2022 succeeded on two crucial fronts. It froze the rent and it stopped evictions. The first and foremost goal wasn't to claw back 15 percent, but to make people feel more secure in their homes.

One fellow spared from eviction by the emergency declaration is Michael Tierney, who now represents the Second Ward on the Common Council. At the time he made $32,000 a year as a staff aide to Assemblymember Kevin Cahill and he lived in an apartment on John Street with his girlfriend for $1,900 month. When she moved out, he found himself in a financial squeeze. So did his landlord, who suggested that such a rent would make him "housing insecure" so the landlord planned to boot him in favor of someone with a higher salary. The emergency declaration stopped it. The rent has remained frozen, but he says that under the 1 percent reduction he's owed more $50,000 in over payments plus treble damages because the landlord has violated the law. His complaint filed with the state agency sits in limbo, because the building owner has filed a separate claim that it should be exempted from the law because of property upgrades made after 1974.

Tierney served on the rent guidelines board that voted for the 15 percent reduction in 2022. They knew what lay ahead, or at least they knew the nature of the beast they faced — organized landlords who'd turn to the law or ignore the law, depending on what suited them best. The board voted on the premise, he said, that "you might as well do what you want because somebody will sue you anyway." In fact, he would have voted for an even deeper reduction because there were landlords who'd raised their rents by 50 percent over two years. Yet he doesn't really see defeat in this story. What he sees are hundreds of renters like himself galvanized into action, packing public hearings, organizing tenants associations at the larger complexes and now coalescing into the Hudson Valley Tenants Union. The group was recently launched by June Nemon, a veteran organizer who may not have knocked on every tenant's door in the 55 buildings covered by rent stabilization but has surely come as close as anyone. They have recruited the leaders who've encouraged their neighbors to pack City Hall hearings.

At the time of the emergency declaration in 2022, Nemon worked at housing activist group For the Many, then busy with a campaign to limit Airbnb-style short-term rentals. He was still rather new to Kingston after being an itinerant organizer for a Bernie campaign and other races around the country. At a block party at Stony Run, they were asked about the new rent stabilization program. Nemon, who didn't have a background in tenant organizing, read a "How To" pamphlet from the Democratic Socialists of America and got started knocking on doors. In time they left For the Many to create what has now become the new tenants union.

"Not a penny!" they answer when I ask if they know of any payouts by landlords to tenants owed for their 15 percent overcharges. Yet there are several dozen tenants, activists involved with the union, who've decided to take matters into their own hands. Backed up by favorable judgments from the state or engaged in ongoing lawsuits, they're now paying the 15 percent reduced rent for their apartments, whether their landlords like it or not.

In fact, none of these efforts should be necessary. Ben Surface, a lawyer with the Hudson Valley Justice Center, points out that every landlord owning a rent-stabilized building is legally obligated to reimburse every tenant for overcharges whether or not the tenant files a complaint. And legally obligated to lower the rent by 15 percent. That's the law as upheld by the courts. So why do the landlords flagrantly ignore the law? Either they believe that somehow somewhere a court will yet side with them and throw out the Kingston system. Or they've done a "cost-benefit calculation," Surface suspects, "that a significant number of tenants will never be able successfully enforce the law no matter how the courts rule."

So now obeying the law is optional? At least if you can afford lawyers? Maybe that really is the American Way.

Will Nixon is the author of "The Pocket Guide to Woodstock."