
Kingston Common Council unanimously backs state housing bills
KINGSTON, N.Y. — The city’s Common Council voted unanimously on Tuesday, during a session packed with supporters, in favor of a pair of memorializing resolutions supporting state bills expanding rent stabilization and creating a state authority to build affordable public housing.
“The City of Kingston has been a leader in pursuing bold solutions to the housing crisis because everyday people have come together and organized,” said Jenna Goldstein, Ulster County community organizer at progressive group For the Many, in a statement. “The passage of these resolutions is another important victory for tenants and will exert necessary pressure on state lawmakers to pass the REST Act and the Social Housing Development Authority Act. These laws would protect thousands more tenants in Kingston, and potentially millions more across the state, by expanding access to rent stabilization and ensuring affordable housing for the long term.”
Goldstein and For the Many also called on the city to cancel the vacancy study.
“We don’t need another vacancy study to know that there is still a housing crisis in the City of Kingston,” Hadley Parum, a Kingston tenant and member of the Hudson Valley Democratic Socialists of America, said in a statement after the vote. “Tenants and homeowners alike are feeling the squeeze of the housing crisis – which has left too many of our neighbors living in shelters, motels, or forced to move farther away from their community to afford housing. Kingston needs social housing that is affordable to local working families, not just to private developers.”