ALBANY – Hudson Valley Property Owners Association filed suit in United States District Court Northern District in Albany on Thursday challenging the constitutionality of a recent amendment to the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1975 (ETPA).
The amendment concerns vacancy studies conducted by municipalities to determine eligibility for imposing rent control within their borders.
Also named in the suit is the State of New York.
This is the same property owners’ group that lost a state appeal of the City of Kingston’s rent stabilization rollback on Thursday.
The federal complaint alleges that the amendment violates property owners’ rights to be free from unreasonable searches and to due process. The amendment as adopted in December 2023, allows municipalities to conduct what the group maintains are illegal “administrative searches” without first demonstrating probable cause to a judge and obtaining a search warrant.
The complaint also alleges violation of property owners due process rights by imposing fines and sanctions, i.e., marking properties of survey non-responders as having no vacancies without first having notice of a violation and a hearing on the matter. “Instead of improving accuracy, this feature allows municipalities to manipulate the vacancy rate lower as was done by Kingston in their 2022 vacancy survey,” said Richard Lanzarone, executive director of the Hudson Valley property owners group.
The organization is seeking a statewide injunction barring application of the amendment and a halt to ETPA vacancy studies currently being conducted by the Village of Nyack and the City of Poughkeepsie.
