GOSHEN – Hudson Valley Property Owners Association, Inc. Tuesday filed suit in Supreme Court in Orange County against the City of Newburgh and New York State Division of Housing & Community Renewal, challenging the legality of Newburgh’s imposition of rent control through the adoption of the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 (ETPA).
The suit cites among other things what it says are serious errors in Newburgh’s Vacancy Study which when corrected, shows the vacancy rate is too high to allow the city to adopt ETPA.
The organization said Newburgh was advised numerous times in advance of the vote that the vacancy study had fatal flaws, but they proceeded anyway in the “illegal adoption” of ETPA.
The property owners group said errors include improper inclusion of ineligible exempt buildings in the survey, incorrect reporting of submitted results and basic math calculation errors.
When the errors are corrected, the city’s own survey results show a 7.56 percent vacancy rate, not the 3.93 percent vacancy rate incorrectly reported by the city. By law, statute, the city cannot adopt ETPA if the vacancy rate exceeds 5 percent.
HVPOA is seeking an immediate injunction halting the enforcement of ETPA in Newburgh, the nullification of city council’s resolution opting into ETPA and prohibiting New York State Division of Housing & Community Renewal from processing building registrations.
