Upstate rent stabilization has run into some snags

Local lawmakers are undaunted at the prospect of regular challenges to rent stabilization efforts, but at the state level, officials are trying to get a handle on what it will take for the promise of the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act to be fulfilled amid lawsuits and procedural costs. 

State lawmakers asked upstate tenant advocates to explain the necessity of rent stabilization at a hearing Tuesday, which is now an option for upstate municipalities but has been sparsely utilized despite a statewide housing crisis. They also asked about the success of “good cause” eviction protections included in the 2024 state budget, which prevent many landlords from evicting tenants without a good cause and set guidelines for rental increases for lease renewals. 

Proponents of rent stabilization on the local level have been plagued by a rash of often lethal lawsuits brought by landlords. These legal challenges have succeeded in invalidating legally required vacancy studies and preventing municipalities from formally declaring a housing emergency and opting in to the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, which is required to institute rent stabilization. Just one city, Kingston, has been successful in court so far, and a new vacancy study will end rent stabilization just as it was made legal. 

Poughkeepsie tried and failed to opt in to the ETPA in 2024 after a lawsuit from the Housing Providers of New York State (then known as the Hudson Valley Property Owners Association) got its vacancy study thrown out. 

Poughkeepsie Common Councilor Evan Menist said that, faced with the seemingly insurmountable task of getting rent stabilization to work in upstate New York, he still feels compelled to try. 

“I keep having friends and neighbors who keep getting ridiculous rent increases that are pricing them out of their homes, out of their neighborhoods, out of our community, out of their houses, into their cars and onto the streets, and so we can't just give up because we lost a lawsuit,” Menist told City & State. “We're there to keep fighting for those people to help them be able to afford a place to live.”

But local municipalities don’t have New York City’s comparatively bottomless resources to keep a legal case going for years or to redo studies. Housing Providers of New York State Executive Director Rich Lanzarone testified at a hearing Tuesday that his organization spent roughly $150,000 to sue Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Newburgh. Menist told lawmakers at the same hearing that $30,000 was a sizable cost for a city like Poughkeepsie to pay. 

Assembly Housing Chair Linda Rosenthal wondered if the money that Housing Providers of New York spent on lawsuits might not be better spent on maintaining a landlord’s housing portfolios, but Lanzarone argued that rent regulation was causing their property values to plummet, so there was no reason to relent. 

“It’s a protection of property rights,” he said. 

Tenant lawyers are hoping that local lawmakers keep the faith on rent stabilization,  especially after the comparatively smooth rollout of “good cause” eviction policies, but they understand that things have changed since 2019, when the HSTPA’s introduction meant upstate New York could explore more ways to combat a lack of housing affordability. 

“We spent the last five years trying to push municipalities to take on that risk, and what the landlords have proven to us is that that risk is too expensive to bear,” Ben Surface, a supervising attorney at the Hudson Valley Justice Center, said.

Lawmakers have already proposed their own remedy for failed rent stabilization in upstate municipalities in the form of the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants Act (known as the REST Act), sponsored by Assembly Member Sarahana Shrestha and state Sen. Brian Kavanagh. The bill would allow localities to declare a housing emergency and opt in to the ETPA without having to first undertake a costly vacancy study whose validity could later be challenged by landlords in court. The bill would also expand the number of units available for rent regulation. 

The REST Act failed to gain traction last year, but the tenor of Tuesday’s hearing made it clear that the drive for additional housing regulations, especially those that can prop up existing law, isn’t going anywhere. The state Legislature may not be able to get anything too thorny pushed through in an election year for state lawmakers and the governor, but the prospect still has landlords alarmed. Lanzarone suggested that if the tenant advocates succeeded, the landlords he represents might just give up and leave New York. “Oh, you mean, sell our properties and move to Tennessee,” he said.