Under the current Emergency Tenant Protection Act, which was expanded to include communities outisde New York City in 2019, any municipality can declare a housing emergency and opt into rent control if a study finds its apartment vacancy rate to be less than 5 percent.
A new bill sponsored by Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, both Democrats, would nix that requirement. Kavanagh says the “Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants,” or REST, Act would allow upstate communities to opt in based on a variety of factors, including a vacancy study or publicly-available data like the eviction rate and homeless shelter population.
"A lot of local governments don't have the resources to do a rigorous survey with their own local resources," says Kavanagh, from the 27th District.
New York, like many states, is grappling with a housing crisis that has driven up market rents. Multiple cities have tried to implement rent control since 2019, but only Kingston has had any success. Poughkeepsie and Newburgh’s vacancy studies were both challenged and struck down in court. Kingston is still mired in litigation over its vacancy study from 2022, even as it plans to conduct a new one this year.
The Hudson Valley Property Owners Association, which has been party to these lawsuits, says cities are manipulating housing studies to make it look like their vacancy rates are lower than they really are — but it maintains studies are still the most objective way to measure housing emergencies. Executive Director Rich Lanzarone equates the REST Act with “Draconian” overreach.
“It’s an assault on the mom and pop landlords from Buffalo to Montauk," he says.
If lawmakers want to tackle the housing crisis, Lanzarone says they should focus on building more housing, not restricting landlords. He says measures like rent control place an unfair burden on smaller landlords and disincentivize future development.
“Once you're ensnared in this, the state is constantly asking for reports. So in Kingston, we have a retired property owner: 80 years old, a retired plumber. He does his own work, he keeps his property very well — but he's totally computer illiterate. And the state requires these reports to be filed by computer only. Now they've fined him $14,000 because he's late on filing his reports," Lanzarone scoffs. "Who would want to be a landlord in New York state? You'd have to be out of your mind."
In addition to changing how cities opt in, the REST Act would allow rent control to apply to more units. Currently, the ETPA only applies to buildings built before 1974 with more than six units. Shrestha, from the 103rd District, says that isn’t realistic for smaller communities upstate.
“Lots of localities just don’t have big buildings with a lot of units. That might be more common in New York City. It’s not common everywhere," she adds. "The law is stuck in 1974, because that’s when it was first passed. But we want to bring it in line with what we did with good-cause eviction, which is exempting only buildings that were built in the last 15 years on a rolling basis.”
Shrestha says municipalities would be able to choose whether they want to apply rent control to buildings with less than six units.
Good-cause eviction restricts landlords from evicting tenants without a legitimate cause. Many cities have opted in to good-cause eviction. Binghamton passed a resolution Wednesday, joining Ithaca, Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Newburgh, and Croton-on-Hudson. The city of Middletown has scheduled a public hearing on good-cause eviction for March 4.
Kavanagh says it’s clear local officials want to step in on issues like eviction and rent. He hopes the REST Act can help them do that.
"When you ask New Yorkers, 'Are we having a housing crisis?' they don't say, 'Well, we have to measure the vacancy rate and determine that it's under 5 percent, and then we'll know whether we have a housing crisis,'" says Kavanagh. "So this is mostly about moderning the standard and recognizing that local governments make choices based on a variety of figures all the time."
