New York should expand rent stabilization laws
In 2022, the city of Kingston made history by becoming the first municipality in upstate New York to adopt rent stabilization, allowing tenants a say in deciding rent adjustments. Since then, over a thousand Kingston households have been protected from exorbitant rent hikes, evictions, and displacement. However, under New York’s existing rent stabilization law, the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 (ETPA), only 20% of the city’s rental units are eligible for these protections, leaving over 4,000 Kingston households without the same safeguards as their neighbors. It’s an arbitrary, unfair disparity that could be addressed this year—if the state legislature steps up to protect tenants.
For the Many’s Jenna Goldstein writes alongside Alderwoman Michele Hirsch in a Daily Freeman guest Op-ed about the introduction of the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants (REST) Act, which, with its potential passage, would help to make rents more affordable for upstate towns and cities by allowing them to opt in more easily to rent stabilization.
If New York’s rent stabilization laws actually worked for upstate communities, Kingston wouldn’t be the only municipality outside New York City to successfully opt into ETPA. We need a rent stabilization law that was written for all New York tenants, not just renters in 1970s NYC. Upstate tenants deserve to stay in our homes and live in stable, thriving communities as much as anyone else. The current process is broken. It’s time to give it a rest.
