Kingston’s proposed ‘Good Cause Eviction’ law moves forward - The Daily Freeman
KINGSTON, N.Y. — A Common Council committee narrowly advanced a proposed Good Cause Eviction law for the city of Kingston after reaching a compromise that would limit the legislation to buildings with more than four units.
During a meeting Wednesday evening, the Laws and Rules Committee voted 3-2 to move the proposal to the full council for consideration. Voting in favor of the Good Cause Eviction proposal were council Majority Leader Reynolds Scott-Childress, D-Ward 3, and Aldermen Jeffrey Ventura Morell, D-Ward 1, and Rita Worthington, D-Ward 4. Opposed were aldermen Don Tallerman, D-Ward 5, and Patrick O’Reilly, a nonenrolled voter who represents Ward 7.
The proposal will go to the council for a “first reading” during its meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 7. No action can be taken on the matter until the council holds a “second reading,” which likely will take place at its regular monthly meeting in January.
Kingston’s proposed Good Cause Eviction law outlines the reasons a landlord can evict a tenant, including failure to pay rent, violating the terms of the lease, causing a nuisance, or breaking the law. It also seeks to prohibit landlords from increasing rents by more than 5% without justification.
Tallerman and O’Reilly raised several objections to the proposal, including the idea of capping rent increases. They said the proposed law could hurt housing efforts in the long term and take away property owners’ rights.
O’Reilly said the way to address the housing issue is to incentivize residents and developers to build more units. He said more housing would naturally lead to decreased rents, which would address the issue of rent increases in Kingston.
“This is going to scare people from investing in our city,” O’Reilly said. “It’s going to scare people from investing in housing.”
Tallerman questioned how a landlord could be expected to make improvements to a rental property if not allowed to increase rents by more than 5%.
Worthington said landlords would have a remedy to exceed the 5% limit by going to court and justifying the increase to a judge. She said the legislation is designed to help people stay in their homes because the city already is seeing many people being forced to leave Kingston due to increasing rents.
“Our current law tends to favor property owners,” Scott-Childress said. “There’s a huge amount of material in New York state law, and also in our code, that’s all about the powers of the property owners. The idea behind this law is simply to try to create an even playing field so that tenants can have some more clarity about their future in their house.”
He added that the legislation would not be a threat to housing development, which has been seen in places where similar laws were enacted, such as Jersey City and the states of Colorado and California.
O’Reilly also said he felt the legislation would hurt “mom and pop” operations in which landlords have only a few units and are not running them as a business.
That concern led to the committee agreeing to limit the legislation to buildings with more than four units. The original proposal considered by lawmakers would have applied to all residential rental properties in the city.
source: https://www.dailyfreeman.com/2021/11/18/kingstons-proposed-good-cause-eviction-law-moves-forward/
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