Kingston Made Rent Law History Two Years Ago. That Was the Easy Part.

But it wasn’t the property manager, Opus Management Group, that told her so. Instead, she learned about the new law from a flyer. A local progressive group, For the Many, was looking to start a tenants union at Chestnut Mansion, and Cizmazia had been invited to the first meeting.

In New York City, the broad strokes of rent stabilization are well known. Tenants lucky enough to live in one of roughly 1 million regulated apartments in the five boroughs enjoy below-market rents and the right to renew their leases. Each year, landlords can only increase rents as much as a government-appointed board allows.

Thanks to reforms the state passed in 2019, any city or town with a sufficiently low vacancy rate can now adopt the regime, which is governed by New York’s 1974 Emergency Tenant Protection Act, or ETPA. Poughkeepsie did so recently, and Albany is on the way.

But as renters in Kingston are learning two years in, adopting the law is only the beginning. Their first regulated leases were supposed to include an unprecedented 15 percent reduction, but after landlords sued the city and state, tenants have yet to see their rents go down.

Many landlords have not kept up with registering their apartments, as the law requires. And while there are mechanisms for fighting overcharges and demanding repairs, tenants aren’t necessarily familiar with them, much less comfortable standing up to their landlords. Those brave enough to do so are navigating complex bureaucratic channels.

“When I rented before, in other places, you’re basically taught, ‘Keep your head down,’” Cizmazia explained recently. But in late November, after living for months with the bent door, she submitted a complaint to the state agency that administers the rent laws, the Division of Housing and Community Renewal. A DHCR inspector confirmed in January that the door was “warped” and directed her landlord to fix it.

They didn’t. In May, Cizmazia submitted another form. She’s waiting to hear about next steps, which could include a hearing and eventual fine. “I feel safer that I can’t just get evicted at the drop of a hat like I could have when I lived in Connecticut, right?” she said. But it’s still stressful. “I wish that there was better enforcement.”

Landlords testified before the board about the high cost of fuel and maintenance, but were outnumbered by tenants describing unaffordable rent. “People came and poured their hearts out,” said Carol Soto, one of the board’s tenant representatives. “It was incredible.” The final vote was 6-3 for a 15 percent cut — the first reduction by a rent board in ETPA history.

But it was short-lived. A local landlord group, the Hudson Valley Property Owners Association, was already suing to block implementation of the ETPA. The group alleged that Kingston’s vacancy survey was flawed. And while a county judge found the survey sound, he deemed the rent cut an overstep.

A higher court eventually revived the rent reduction this March; the judge wrote that the law doesn’t require adjusting rent “upward rather than downward.” But another appeal is already underway. For the Many has advised tenants not to demand reductions just yet, for fear that landlords will prevail in their suit and seek repayment of the difference.

The Hudson Valley Property Owners Association’s legal efforts extend beyond Kingston. It was recently successful in stopping rent regulation 40 miles to the south in Newburgh, where a judge ruled that the vacancy rate calculation “lacked a rational basis.” Its next target is Poughkeepsie, which opted into rent stabilization in June with the largest coverage to date in the region: about 1,500 apartments. (That number is likely to be eclipsed by Albany, where a vacancy survey is underway.)

“We don’t really believe there is this, quote, ‘housing emergency,’” Rich Lanzarone, the association’s executive director, said during a phone call this spring. “The idea that a 5 percent vacancy rate represents an emergency is ridiculous. That’s actually a healthy market.”

But tenant advocates say more needs to be done. Rather than relying heavily on renters to initiate complaints within an unfamiliar regulatory regime, they say, DHCR should open a Hudson Valley outpost for its Tenant Protection Unit.

Launched in 2012 and headquartered in Manhattan, the TPU is DHCR’s self-described “proactive law enforcement office,” tasked with rooting out patterns of landlord misconduct, like illegal rent increases, registration lapses, and systemic harassment.

Pascal’s team can fine landlords and pull them into hearings, but the TPU has a bigger hammer. Crucially, it has subpoena power, meaning it can force owners to provide sworn testimony and business records. But the unit is small: 24 full-time staff, eight of whom are lawyers. The Office of Rent Administration, by contrast, is over 300 strong.

The state budget finalized in spring 2022 included $600,000 in new funding to create a TPU outpost in the mid-Hudson Valley in 2024, but the office has yet to materialize.

“I think people here would get in their cars and go to a TPU office,” said Soto, the Kingston Rent Guidelines Board member, who is a rent-stabilized tenant herself. “If they felt like they had no recourse, then they could take [their] questions to the TPU, and yes, they would be bombarded, but maybe it would get [DHCR] off its butt.”

DHCR did not respond to questions about when the office will open, but stressed instead that it is actively recruiting for the unit. But in June, the head of the TPU, Deputy Commissioner Pavita Krishnaswamy, discussed the expansion plan in some detail with a group of Kingston tenants.

“We have two problems — one is space, and one is hiring,” Krishnaswamy said, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by New York Focus and City Limits. In the meantime, she urged tenants to contact her office by phone or email.

“The vision is that it would not just be lawyers, but it would be paralegal advocates who can answer the phone, come out to buildings, see conditions with their own eyes, meet with tenants,” she added. “It’s one of the things I have learned, working in government, it takes time. But we’re persisting.”

State Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, who represents Ulster County, said she would like to help sort out the office space issue. In general, she said, the state needs “a more serious commitment to empowering DHCR to do enforcement.”

A vocal tenant advocate, she said her recent re-election is proof that renters outside New York City are starting to feel like a political bloc: “Here, everything is hinging on this new learned habit of being active tenants fighting for something.”

If and when overcharge complaints start rolling in, DHCR is not known for quick processing. A state comptroller audit found that complaints submitted between 2010 and 2012 took more than a year and a half to resolve on average.

Service reduction complaints — like Cizmazia’s door — were addressed somewhat faster.

Typically, in these cases, landlords have to stop collecting their most recent Rent Guidelines Board increase until the problem is fixed. But that leverage doesn’t currently exist in Kingston, where the last adjustment on the books was a rent cut.

In a statement to New York Focus and City Limits, DHCR spokesperson Charni Sochet said the Office of Rent Administration “administers the rent laws as enacted by the legislature” and ensures they are enforced through “proactive audits, investigations, and other enforcement activities.”

Online filing and simplified paperwork have helped speed complaints along in recent years, according to the agency, and the new state budget includes funding for 35 additional rent administration staffers. But due process takes time, it noted.

In certain situations, time is of the essence. In February, for example, a carbon monoxide leak forced tenants at three Chestnut Mansion buildings to evacuate for a week. (Opus did not reply to questions about building conditions or its responsibilities under regulation.) Goldstein emailed the TPU saying she planned to submit complaints but needed more support.

The office replied within a few hours with an email, linking to various forms. The TPU is based in Manhattan, it said, and “does not have the resources to address service related issues in Kingston.” Instead, DHCR will respond to problems “via the complaint forms that were referenced.”

This was all too much for Molly Rogerson, who lived in one of the evacuated buildings. By April, she and her partner had moved out, to a more expensive apartment in town. “I felt like my hands were tied,” she said.

A vacancy survey is still underway in Albany, but organizers there see potential for a sea change. More than 40 percent of the renters they helped last year didn’t even have a lease. Under the ETPA, not only are landlords obligated to provide them, but tenants would have a chance to negotiate the initial terms.

Canyon Ryan, United Tenants of Albany’s executive director, is also excited about the prospect of Rent Guidelines Board meetings, where tenants could testify and, hopefully, feel a new sense of power in numbers. “It politicizes the issue of rent,” they said.

In June, Cizmazia took the podium at a Kingston Rent Guidelines Board meeting to testify in favor of a rent freeze for the coming year, which she said was “beyond fair for the working class who are struggling to find jobs to pay their bills.”

She had been laid off from her tech job but was confident that she would not face retaliation for testifying. This feeling didn’t come easily, Cizmazia explained recently: “It took basically the whole year I’ve been living here to slowly become more comfortable with speaking out.”