Following the release of a new rental vacancy survey in the city of Kingston, which showed a vacancy rate well above the 5 percent threshold required to reverse the housing emergency declaration, two public hearings were held separately last week to aid councilmembers in their deliberations about what future, if any, should remain for the rent stabilization measures the city first adopted three years ago, when the rental vacancy number was 1.74 percent.

First made available to every hamlet, village, town and city north of Rockland and Westchester counties in 2019, Kingston has so far been the only Hudson River municipality to successfully opt in to emergency tenant protections. Not that others haven’t tried.

Efforts to do likewise were halted by lawyers representing a single landlord gro

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