To better understand what it’s really like to be homeless, more than 30 individuals slept in tents on a chilly and wet Friday night into Saturday.

The event on City Hall property, the May Day Sleep Out For Housing Justice, was capped off by a Rally & Speak Out on May 1, International Worker's Day, to keep pressure on local officials and draw awareness to both the housing and homelessness crisis.

“We had the sleep-out last night … Even with tents, layering up and having bathrooms … it was tough, it was really tough. People got an eye-opening experience and that’s just a taste of what people experience on a daily basis,” said Rashida Tyler, founder of The Real Kingston Tenants Union, a founding member of the Ulster County Coalition for Housing Justice and a member on the state board of Citizen Action.

“Housing is a human right, but it is also life-saving,” Tyler said. “We’re out here to make sure our housing policies match up with our beliefs and our values and what we’re espousing as a society.”

Kingston has made headlines recently for being the second-most moved-to location in the entire United States during the pandemic. But this mass migration has strained an already tenuous housing market. It has also led to a drastic increase in rent prices and the further displacement of vulnerable residents.

Tyler said a homeless encampment behind the Kingston Hannaford was allegedly destroyed by city officials in March; it was one of many actions, she said, that led them to organize and speak out. “When I see that the encampment was actually broken up and tents were slashed and people were cleared out like they were garbage — I have a real problem with that,” said Tyler. “When you cut up someone’s tent in the middle of the winter, even in March — last night it was 43 degrees and it felt like winter. And so that is someone’s life. When you take away their means of survival, you’re telling them to die.”

Participants at the rally spoke about The Good Cause Eviction bill, and pressuring local and regional lawmakers to support the measure, which would expand tenants’ rights across the state. It would prevent no-fault evictions and require landlords to justify rent increases above 1.5 percent of the consumer price index.

“We are getting more money than ever before for housing,” said Tyler. “We’re getting $34 million for Ulster County, $18 million for Kingston, there’s another $93 million going to the state for housing and homelessness, and then there’s another amount of money going for the community block development grant.”

A regional task force has been implemented to decide on allocation of federal relief funds, with County Executive Pat Ryan announcing Monday that mental health and addiction will be a priority for funding.

This may be in line with hopes voiced at the rally, where many speakers mentioned the closing of Chiz’s Heart Street, the Washington Avenue boarding house that was home to dozens of severely mentally ill people, as a priority. “We hope to save places like Chiz’s Heart Street, because that is within our means,” said Tyler. “How can we spend this money? Yes, we can invest in some traditional programs but also what other new ideas are out there? I saw that Mayor Noble sent out a letter just yesterday asking for new ideas — so listen to us, we have ideas we’ve been talking about for a very long time, and we want action.”

Greg McCollough, executive director of the Beyond the 4 Walls Outreach Program, also participated in the sleepout. “I couldn’t sleep at all … All I could do was think about while I’m sleeping out there, there are other people who are homeless who are sleeping out there at the same time, but for me, I’ll be going home in the morning, but for them, they are still out there. None of us are blind, we see what’s going on, either we do something about it or we ignore it like everybody else. I couldn’t ignore it … In my mind I always say, it could be me, so I’m going to do everything I can to help these people.”

Holly Kelly, O+ Positive executive director, and member of the UC Coalition for Housing Justice, urged lawmakers to invest in affordable housing. “The homelessness crisis in Kingston, we don’t talk about enough, we ignore it, we pretend it’s not happening here. We need the government to understand that this is a decades-long investment in truly affordable housing on all levels,” Kelly said. “The federal government money that Kingston and Ulster County is about to get needs to be utilized for housing, and we need to hold our elected officials accountable and make sure that our most vulnerable community members are taken care of.”

The eviction moratorium in New York was set to expire Saturday, but lawmakers on Monday extended it through Aug. 31.

The Ulster County Coalition for Housing Justice petition can be found here:

https://ucchj.squarespace.com/petition