KINGSTON – Kingston’s rent stabilization law rollback has been upheld by the State Appellate Court, Third Department. It had been challenged by a landlords’ organization.
Mayor Steven Noble termed the ruling “a victory” for city residents.
“It is a victory for fair and appropriate housing in our communities and it is just one of the many tools. We need to build more housing. We need to have a variety of different housing types but for the 1,200-plus apartments that we have in Kingston, this is exactly the decision we wanted to come back for them,” Noble said.
“Nothing in the applicable statutory language explicitly requires that the board adjust the rent upward rather than downward as petitioners claim, and petitioners’ argument as to why such a requirement should be implied is less than compelling,” the court wrote in a decision dated Thursday, March 21.
Landlords sued to block Kingston’s rent stabilization in November 2022. The court sided with tenants on all counts, also affirming Kingston’s vacancy study and allowing tenants to challenge rent increases between January 2019 and July 2022. Between 2016 and 2020, median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Ulster County rose by almost 50 percent.
The organization Housing Justice for All called the court ruling “a landmark decision that will embolden tenants across the state.”
The City of Newburgh, meanwhile, opted into rent stabilization last fall and recently the same landlords’ group filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block that decision.
