What Will It Take For Other Upstate New York Cities To Adopt Rent Control?

Last month, the city of Kingston became the first in upstate New York to pass rent control. The precedent is galvanizing tenants, organizers and electeds in other cities across the state to conduct vacancy surveys, the first step to passing rent control under state law.

“We’ve spoken directly with elected officials that have said the Kingston law provided them momentum and has reignited the conversation around conducting these vacancy studies,” says Brahvan Ranga, the political director of For The Many, a nonprofit organizing political campaigns across the state. But those cities will face the same obstacles Kingston did: Political opposition to conducting vacancy studies and the risk that landlords will distort their data to keep units market rate.