At the Common Council Legal Committee meeting that took place last Wednesday, it was decided that instead of pursuing an amended version of the "good cause" eviction law, which had been vetoed by Mayor Kamal Johnson to allow the amendments to be made, the Council would hold off on pursuing passage of the law in favor of passing a resolution in support of a similar law being pursued in the state legistlature (A5573/S3082) and sending a letter to the Attorney General requesting an opinion of whether or not municipalities had the authority to pass such a law. Last night, those two resolutions were expected to be introduced at the informal meeting of the Common Council, but that did not happen.
Aldermen Rebecca Wolff (First Ward) and Tiffany Garriga (Second Ward), both of whom are on the Legal Committee and were present at last Wednesday's meeting, wanted to table the resolution supporting state legislation and move forward with the law, amended as Wolff had requested. Jeff Baker, counsel to the Council, noted there were "continuing questions of the fundamental legality of the law" and advised, "You could go forward with the two resolutions and still amend the law."
Alderman Ryan Wallace (Third Ward) pointed out that Attorney General Tish James had come out in support of the law now being considered in the state legislature, implying that seeking an opinion about the legality of the law from the AG's office was therefore unnecessary. Baker tried to make the point that a policy statement from a statewide perspective was not the same as saying that it was acceptable for every municipality to pass such a law on their own. A memo shared at the Legal Committee meeting from the attorneys to the Beacon City Council, which is considering a similar law, advised that "the State Legislature has preempted the ability of a municipality to regular the Landlord/Tenant relationship in this manner." Judith Goldiner, attorney for the Legal Aid Society who was attending our Council meeting at the invitation of Rebecca Garrard, legislative director for Citizen Action NY, declared that the municipalities were not preempted by the state from taking such action and insisted there was no conflict. Garrard also spoke, saying she was "disgusted to be here testifying in this matter." She accused Baker of being "the only person who has any confusion or hesitation" about the law and spoke passionately about residents of Hudson "being gentrified, unhoused, and displaced."
The call for the law to be passed expeditiously was taken up by Quintin Cross, Claire Cousin, Kaya Weidman, and Molly Stinchfield. Despite the fact that the proposed law made its first appearance in August, without having been vetted by any committee, Garriga complained it had been "sitting around for so long." As a consequence of the argument of urgency, Council president called an emergency meeting of the Legal Committee to take place on Thursday, November 11, at 6:30 p.m. The purpose of the meeting will be to amend the law as Wolff decided it had to be amended after the Council had already passed it in September. The meeting will take place on Zoom, but the link to the meeting has not yet been published.
COPYRIGHT 2021 CAROLE OSTERINK
I don't know about you, but I don't feel gentrified. Abused, maybe, but not gentrified. I do feel that Alderman Wallace needs to listen to Mr. Baker (while he's still at the job). And the Legal Aid Society lawyer also seems at sea -- which no doubt made her feel right at home in the council chamber.
ReplyDeleteI feel gentrified, I am a renter, not a Hudson home owner. I feel completely gentrified!!!!! I received a legal letter today that my building at 252 Union has been sold to unknown investors, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I will need to vacate. I have been here for 5 years, I have a very good job in Hudson but rents in Hudson are now insane, I may well need to move. Home owners who have not had to research rentals in this area are COMPLETELY out of touch with the local housing crisis. The housing crisis is very real. I know you say “just move to Philmont”. Again, you have NOT been in touch with local rentals for a very long time.
DeleteYou have no lease?!? No lease, no protection. You may have a housing issue but that does not mean the city is experiencing a housing crisis. Society pushes people towards ownership for a reason … control is one of them: control your costs, etc. and if you haven’t gotten a property tax bill you’re out of touch with Hudson housing. It cuts both ways.
DeleteThere are actually a number of measures protecting tenants in situations like this, from legal requirements regarding notice to structural protections in the process (get a lawyer and the new property owner will have a whole different conversation with you.)
DeleteAnd John, you have a JD and what by all appearances is a thriving business moving in lockstep with the growing economy. Your experience is certainly not every person's. Anecdotally, I believe there is certainly a lot of displacement going on, though that's colored by my own experience. Proponents of this resolution should have come to the table armed with relevant data, not an inchoate attempt to broadly and deeply influence housing policy by creating a sense of urgency and guilt.
I’m afraid that, in what can be perceived as a hostile environment, many small time landlords will end up cashing out and selling. Same with the Airbnb restrictions. Who wants to go from doing short term rentals to long term if the risk is not worth it? These will all become single family homes or swept up and folded into the Galvan empire. Soon the few places for rent will be through a single landlord.
DeleteI BEGGED THEM FOR A LEASE. They put me off. I actually heard them LYING to the new owners, they told him that I wanted to move out soon. Bastards. I told them several times I wanted to stay. But this is nothing new. The larger issue is that there is a HUGE housing crisis here in Hudson.
DeleteJohn Friedman:
I generally agree with your comments but you have a GIGANTIC BLINDSPOT.
Hudson has a very serious affordable housing issue. Just because you are not personally experiencing any problems does NOT mean that us poor folks are not struggling.
My landlords told me that after the recent property tax hikes 2 years ago, they are making NO money. They were DESPERATE to get out of Hudson. Meanwhile, I just have to say, the building across the street is a Galvan property. It is a 2 unit building. Anecdotal but telling. The upstairs has been vacant for maybe 2 years. The downstairs has been vacant for 2 months. Galvan does not advertise, there are certainly no For Rent signs. I have NEVER seen a fucking “For Rent” sign ever in Hudson, have you? Galvan hordes these apartments and creates a crisis and then convinces gullible council members that there is a housing crisis.
DeleteTick toc… the clock is winding down on the current regime’s lame duck period and they are going to try and shoehorn in as much legislation as possible to hurt the middle class and help establish a single corporate landlord in Hudson. They overplayed their hand with the Galvan shilling and Airbnb ban and the rest of the city “woke” up. Hopefully the next council will undo these policies as it will be much cheaper than having them struck down in court.
ReplyDeleteHere is the link to the zoom meeting:
ReplyDeletehttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/81290781430?pwd=VnN0ZnBMQ092dFZteW82bVU2b0VBZz09
If you own a single family house in Hudson, never, ever, rent it out. If you don't live in it, sell it. Ms. Wolff has effectively taken single family homes out of the rental market. Nobody in their right mind would ever rent it out, if they can't sell it not subject to a lease encumbrance. And it is false than any other municipality has ever passed a law without the sale exception. Well at least that is true for Newburgh. So it is 100% certain if Hudson is in the vanguard, that it will be sued.
Nobody will be in the rental business but pros gaming the tax system. Maybe that is the intent. Those who are not pros and did it for the romance of it all to fix up buildings, were financial fools.
I've often said that housing is a different kind of investment, as it provides an essential service for a community. As such, some regulations to help protect that community from being suddenly displaced are reasonable.
DeleteThis is a double-edged sword, though. Smaller property owners who live in the community are likely to bear the brunt of ill effects from this legislation, while larger institutional investors whose investment is less personal are most likely to weather the storm and come out ahead in the long term. These smaller property owners are also part of the community that needs some protection.
Indeed, if there was a playbook to turn Hudson into a cash machine for hedge funds, this resolution would be a worthy addition. Who is running this town again?
This is a law with deep and long-lasting ramifications for the Hudson community, both renters and homeowners; it deserves more attention than simply cutting and pasting from the Albany version (Albany, it should be said, has a population, housing market, and economy vastly different from Hudson’s.) The same people who are so urgently advising the Council to pass this immediately should have spoken up months and months ago, when the situation was much the same but there was time to craft effective legislation. This simply affects too many people in the Hudson community, with too much potential for long-term negative effects not to be parsed methodically and thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, this is, as Jeff Baker noted, likely to be pre-empted by state law, and Mr. Wallace’s initial instinct to ask the attorney general for an opinion (a written legal opinion about a municipality’s right to pass this kind of law is vastly different than a campaign talking point) was the correct one. If this ends up being a lawsuit, it might well be a very costly one. Hudson’s reserves exist to serve the community, not act as an ATM for trust fund activists.
Should some version of this legislation pass, at least it might provide some impetus for more community members to get up off their asses and demand transparency and fiscal restraint from their elected leaders, lest property taxes remove long term homeowners and tenants alike.)
My parents owned a house in Hudson in which I had planned to retire. It was a well-kept two family with no code violations, requiring plenty of regular maintenance; we lived in one apartment and rented the other. After my parents passed and I was working elsewhere, I rented its two apts for a few years. Having once been an abused tenant, I made sure I was a considerate landlord. Rent increases were minimal, and I had good tenants. But I lost money every year, and couldn't afford it, especially as the property taxes kept rising; plus the mortgage and utility bills had to be paid every month. So I gave the tenants a year's notice and tried AirBnb. The results were little better, as there's never 100% occupancy, especially in the off season; but I paid the lodging tax and hired local business people to clean and do maintenance and there were no complaints from neighbors. After the last reval, I threw in the towel and sold the house to a buyer who converted it to a one family and uses it occasionally as a second home. The buyer has children that attend private school elsewhere. It was the only viable solution; and though we had owned the house for many years, the costs of its upkeep (new roofs, new siding, foundation work, new windows, etc.) had been so high that after the sale, I paid almost no capital gains tax. Those unfamiliar with the economics of home ownership might look at what we paid for the house and what we sold it for and call my family profiteers. On the contrary, we were ultimate losers. What those who don;t own don't seem to understand is that in many cases the only difference between a renter and a homeowner is that the homeowner is someone who, at the time they bought the house, had decent enough credit and had saved enough money for a down payment so they qualified for a mortgage. But there's no "rent control" on roperty tax increases. Vilification of homeowners, and the perception that they're wealthy, is born of either sheer ignorance or political expedience. Selling that house was the best thing I ever did. I now live far from Hudson in a location with reasonable property taxes, and middle class homeowners in Hudson have all my sympathy.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly what you s happening! Thanks for sharing your story. I feel like these types of stories are not heard enough because people just leave town and move on in their lives. Behind many new homes sales is a story of a middle class family that could not keep up.
Delete