The Kingston Common Council will receive the results of a vacancy survey of rent-controlled properties in the city later this month. The survey, conducted by the city’s Office of Housing Initiatives, could have major implications for Kingston’s rent regulation law.

The survey was conducted in May to establish a vacancy rate at 47 buildings with about 1,000 units of housing that fall under the Emergency Tenant Protection Act — a state law that’s the basis for rent control in the city. To qualify for inclusion in the ETPA, municipalities must demonstrate a vacancy rate below 5 percent in properties eligible for rent control. A 2022 survey by the Office of Housing initiatives established the rate at 1.7 percent, clearing the way for the Kingston Common Council to opt in to the ETPA. At that time, the council also added a provision, not included in the state law, to repeat the vacancy survey every three years to determine if the city remained eligible for rent control.

The survey was conducted in May but city officials have so far declined to release the results. Kingston Wire placed a Freedom of Information Act request for the completed survey forms back on July 11. The city has an Aug. 12 deadline to either release the records or provide an explanation as to why the documents are not covered by New York’s Freedom of Information Law, which generally mandates the release of all public records with certain narrow exceptions.

Meanwhile, in a July 30 memo to Common Council President Andra Shaut, city Director of Housing Initiative Bartek Starodaj asked to present the survey results to the Council’s Laws and Rules Committee when it meets on Aug. 20. Starodaj said the survey had been done to comply with the council directive and added, “As the City of Kingston continues to seek solutions to increase housing availability and affordability, I also believe this survey is essential to maintain an accurate understanding of on-the-ground conditions across the city.”

The Hudson Valley Property Owners Association — a consortium of landlords which fought an unsuccessful three-year legal battle to overturn Kingston’s rent control law based on alleged flaws with the 2022 survey — is expressing transparency concerns with the follow-up study. HVPOA President Rich Lanzarone questioned the delay in releasing the records, noting that in 2022, with city officials eager to opt-in to the ETPA, the results were presented less than two weeks after the survey deadline. Lanzarone also questioned why the most recent survey was conducted using statistical sampling rather than simply counting occupied units at all 47 ETPA buildings as was done in 2022.

Housing advocates at progressive social justice group For the Many have called on city officials not to release the results at all. Even though the city was not required to conduct a survey, according to wording of the state law, if an updated survey shows more than a 5 percent vacancy rate, rent control ends.

"The landlords who make up HVPOA are making these accusations because they will do anything they can to strip ETPA protections away from tenants — including manipulating vacancy studies, as they very likely have here,” said FTM Political Director Brahvan Ranga in June. “Because there is nothing in state law requiring the new study … the Common Council has the authority to decide when the results are released. We believe it is perfectly reasonable for them to delay it, especially if that will protect rent-stabilized tenants.”

Flawed vacancy studies led to courts overturning ETPA opt-ins in Newburgh and Poughkeepsie, while the City of Albany’s effort to enact rent control foundered after the vacancy rate was found to be too high. Kingston is the only community to have successfully enacted rent control since a 2019 state law expanded ETPA eligibility beyond New York City and its immediate suburbs.

To address the issue, local Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha (D-Esopus) has introduced the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act. The proposed law would allow communities to use publicly available data as an alternative to vacancy surveys to establish ETPA eligibility. The law would also change criteria for inclusion in rent control from its current standard of buildings with five or more units built before 1974. Under the REST Act, the ETPA could be applied on a rolling basis to all buildings more than 15 years old while allowing communities to set their own standard for the number of units.