The city’s top lawyer is headed to the state’s highest court to argue a case that will decide the fate of Kingston’s rent control law. Corporation Counsel Barbara Graves-Poller is set to present oral arguments in the case of Hudson Valley Property Owners Association v. City of Kingston on May 15.

The arguments will mark the culmination of a legal battle that began in July 2022 when Kingston became the first upstate community to opt into the state Emergency Tenant Protection Act. The law applies to rental properties with six or more units built before 1974. Eligible buildings are placed under the oversight of the state Division of Homes and Community Renewal, giving tenants added protections against eviction and the right to renew leases and mandating landlords provide required services. The law also gives a locally appointed Rent Guidelines Board the power to determine fair market rent at eligible properties and to set maximum rent increases on an annual basis.

The Hudson Valley Property Owners Association was formed in 2022 to oppose the law and have kept their case before the courts ever since. The lawsuit alleges that Kingston’s 2022 rental housing vacancy survey that found the vacancy rate in eligible properties below the 5 percent threshold needed to invoke the ETPA was invalid. The lawsuit claims that the survey, conducted by the city’s own Office of Housing Initiatives, was rigged to produce a desired result and a more neutral survey would have found the city ineligible for the rent control law. The same lawsuit claims that the city’s Rent Guidelines Board exceeded its authority in 2022 when — in a move unprecedented in state history — they voted to reduce rents at ETPA eligible properties.

In 2023, state Supreme Court Judge David Gandin issued a split decision, upholding the validity of the vacancy survey but siding with the HVPOA on the rent reduction. In May 2024, an appellate panel of the Third Judicial District reversed Gandin’s decision on the rent reduction and dismissed the landlords’ lawsuit entirely.

Now, the case will go before the state’s seven-member Court of Appeals. It will be Graves-Poller’s third appearance before the court. In an email to Kingston Wire, the seasoned municipal attorney who took over the corporation counsel’s job in November 2021, said she prevailed in two previous cases before the state’s highest court on behalf of her former employer, the City of New York.

If Graves-Poller prevails again, she will have cemented the Kingston’s status as the only upstate community to have successfully implemented rent control since 2019 when legislation expanded the laws reach from New York City and its suburbs statewide. Poughkeepsie and Newburgh previously invoked the ETPA only to see the law overturned in court by the HVPOA using arguments similar to those in the lawsuit against Kingston.