The Hudson Valley Tenants Union, a new organization launched in May, held its first general assembly at Old Dutch Church on Saturday, where members elected a tenant council and set priorities for its first year.

June Nemon, the lead organizer for the tenants union, said that 50 attendees participated in the assembly. Tenant organizer at the Franklin Apartments Caitlin Ruppert; Opus Tenants Association organizer Steph De John; Stony Run Tenants Union organizer Raquel Gonzales; co-chair of the Mid-Hudson Valley Democratic Socialists of America housing working group Andrew Hiller; and tenant and union organizer Bridget Kelly were elected to the council.

“We are building a working-class democratic institution, and there are so few of those in our society these days, and we are building this tenants union, not only to try to level the playing field between landlords and tenants, but to win greater change in society,” Nemon said. “We are seeking to build a movement capable of winning truly democratically controlled housing.”

Priorities were laid out by Ruppert and De John. The union seeks to assist tenants in filing rent reductions and preventing illegal rent increases, organize tenants beyond Kingston to support legislative battles in Albany, help pass the Rent Emergency Stabilization Tenants Act (REST), deepen collaboration with the statewide Tenants Bloc and support a pro-tenant Kingston mayoral candidate in 2027.

Nemon said the union is open to “anyone who is not a landlord or works for landlords or profits from housing [who is] willing to be part of this fight and to build a future where everyone has a home that they can afford to live in.”

Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, who introduced the REST Act to the state Assembly, was present at the assembly’s press conference. Shrestha said tenants unions are “one of the core ways of organizing that we believe in” for tenants to gain more leverage.

Shrestha told Kingston Wire that tenants often feel defeated about political change, and a tenants union could shift that.

“When I go door-to-door, I'm a politician. Already, they hear politician, they're like, ‘I don't want to talk to you.’ But, of course, when I say, I introduced the REST Act and learn about it, rent stabilization, then they're all ears,” Shrestha said. “However, if it's their own peers, their own fellow tenants coming to them to talk about this stuff, then that trust is there from the beginning, and it's about being on the same level.”