Last night, Brahvan Ranga, political director for For the Many, appeared at City Hall with a small entourage bearing signs to urge the Common Council to pass a resolution in support of the REST Act, now being considered in the state legislature.
If passed in the state legislature, the REST Act (REST is an acronym for Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants) would make it easier for municipalities outside of New York City to adopt rent stabilization programs. More information about the proposed legislation can be found here.
After Ranga spoke, urging the Council to adopt a resolution of support for rent stabilization while assuring them that such a resolution "does not force the city to adopt it," Kaya Weidman of Kite's Nest spoke, as she has often done in the past, about Hudson's diminishing population. "We are losing our community every day," Weidman told the Council. "We are losing our future, because people have no place to live." She went on to make this rather extraordinary claim: "There are neighborhoods in this town where nobody lives." She seemed to imply these neighborhoods were in the First Ward, but as a resident of the First Ward for more than three decades, I am at a loss to know where these alleged ghost neighborhoods are.
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Addendum: No resolution in support of the REST Act was on the agenda last night, however, such a resolution was introduced at the informal meeting on March 10. That resolution can be found here. It was decided the resolution should be reviewed in the Legal Committee, which it was on April 2. Some questions were raised at the committee meeting, which were submitted to the sponsors of the resolution. The resolution will be reviewed further by the Legal Committee when it meets on May 7. The resolution is expected to be voted on at the regular meeting of the Common Council on May, which takes place on Tuesday, May 20.
Kite's Nest, and its spokesmen, have always been full of shit. Most of them don't live in Hudson and are only interested in getting hand outs from the city (i.e. its taxpayers). The emptiest neighborhood in Hudson is inside Ms. Weidman's head. Make of that statement what you will.
ReplyDeleteIf they taught anything like real life lessons at Kite's Nest, the dearth of affordable rental housing would have an obvious cause -- Good Cause Eviction. Add rent control on top of that and we'll all be truly gentrified.
Hi John - are you suggesting that the 'dearth of affordable rental housing' in Hudson began last October?
DeleteThis kind of “othering”—whether it comes from nativists or certain activist circles—is divisive and unhelpful. It reduces people to caricatures and assumes a lack of community engagement based solely on visibility at certain types of events or organizations.
ReplyDeleteNot everyone shows up at your protest or nonprofit function, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t actively invested in this community. Some of us are helping our elderly neighbors with yard work, sharing meals with friends, or working in and supporting the small businesses that keep Hudson alive. Community takes many forms, and yours is no more legitimate than anyone else’s.
And if your benchmark for a healthy community is the sight of kids playing in the streets, then here’s a practical solution: fix the schools. Families aren’t staying—or even considering Hudson—because the public school system is a dealbreaker. Until that’s addressed, the city’s demographic will continue to skew older.
Have you had the pleasure of recently walking by Kite's Nest community garden and, across the street, composting facility at the northern end of Front Street? They are consistently eyesores, especially the composting site, which is likely a code violation of at least one sort or another.
ReplyDeleteAnd let’s be honest—this is mostly political theater. The state legislation in question is DOA. It hasn’t moved since it was introduced in February and isn’t expected to make it out of committee before the session ends. What we’re really seeing here is Super PAC–funded grandstanding meant to boost the profiles of DSA candidates at both the state and local level. And why did I receive text messages and see posts on social media that this was going to be voted on last night, when it wasn’t on the agenda? Also, who drafted the resolution and gave it to Tom to introduce?
ReplyDeleteThat said, if I were a newly elected Council President crafting the rules of order for the year, I’d implement public comment guidelines that prioritize actual Hudson stakeholders:
1. Hudson residents, business owners, and people who work in Hudson should speak first.
2. Then, private citizens who live outside of Hudson.
3. Lobbyists and reps from outside special interest groups? Feel free to email your statement—we’ll be out of time.
This isn’t about shutting anyone out—it’s about making sure the people who live, work, and pay taxes here are the ones whose voices are heard first. That’s what local government should be about.
On a side note, as the lovable underdog mayoral candidate Lloyd “The Voice of Reason” said anecdotally, many small time landlords, the backbone of Hudson’s rental properties that are mainly 2-4 unit multi- family homes, are giving up and selling. The city is hostile to small landlords and gracious to large ones like Galvan. I know of three myself: one on upper Union, one on Warren, and one on Green. The tenants have been given notice to find a new place because they want to sell it vacant so that the new owner can have the option to convert to single family. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
Union Jack--There was no resolution before the Council. No resolution on the subject has yet been written in Hudson.
DeleteI’m talking about this resolution that was presented by Tom DP last month: https://cms3.revize.com/revize/hudsonnynew/Common%20Council/Agendas%20Meeting%20Documents/2025/March/Resolution%20in%20Support%20of%20REST%20Act%203-11-25%20(004)%20with%20attachment.pdf
DeleteAlso, I’m starting to figure out the scheduling. My personal theory is that he’s holding the vote till the end of May, conveniently to make a big scene at the last meeting before the primaries and drum up support from his base. All the while, the state bill could be dead by then and the point moot.
The resolution was presented at the informal CC in March (3/10). It can be found in the documents folder for that meeting. The amendment and the original law were discussed at the LC in April.
DeleteMargaret Morris
This better be political theater. If this ETPA amendment somehow passes in Albany, the next thing will be the declaration of a permanent housing emergency in Hudson. The amendment would make it trivial.
ReplyDeleteThe only people who seem to protest rent controls are those profiteering off of the rental system and/or interested in increasing their already bloated property values. Housing, like food, isn’t an optional expense. The rental system, like feudal serfdom, is an abusive system designed to keep workers slaving away and transferring their wealth to landowners. Those who can not afford a down payment and meet the requirements of a mortgage are trapped transferring their wealth to those who can. The proposed laws are really symbolic and tepid, as studies and vacancy rates have nothing to do with the problem. Government needs to step in and impose regulations that enforce actual rent caps.
ReplyDeleteI’m not a landlord, nor have any intention on being one in Hudson, but I have many friends who rang and see what’s happening firsthand. I get the frustration around rent, it’s brutal out there. But the push for strict rent regulations might be backfiring, especially in such a small market. We’ve already seen small landlords, people who own one to four units, not corporations, drop out because they can’t keep up with regulations or afford to maintain properties under price restrictions. That just hands more control to big investors, like Galvan, who can weather the costs with tax exemptions, and it’s actually reducing the number of available rentals. Some tenants are even losing housing because landlords are choosing to sell or convert rather than deal with the rules. If we want to make Hudson more affordable, we need real solutions like zoning reform, and building more homes—not just symbolic laws that shrink supply and hurt the very people they aim to protect.
DeleteAlso, when Lloyd tried to make this point at the meeting, using a conversation he had with a landlord just before the meeting, he was shut down by misinformation. They told him that Good Cause would allow for a landlord to raise the rent to accommodate any annual increase in expenses, but that is untrue. According to info put out by For The Many: “caps rent increases at 5% + the Consumer Price Index (up to 10%, currently 8.45-8.82%).” New Assessments, tax increases, utility inflation, can be much more that that. And that’s before any repairs and upkeep. Anyway, Lloyd, if you’re reading this, they bamboozled you.
Back to your original statement, just because someone doesn’t support rent and price controls doesn’t mean they personally profit from that system. Some of us just understand economics and know that these laws actually hurt tenants. Specifically in Hudson, they’ll just become single family homes, get renovated, and make property values for their neighbors, like me, go up further.
Hi SlowArt -
ReplyDeleteI really want to engage with (government can solve this problem better) believers in a sincere and constructive way so that we can all learn together. And thank you for posting your thoughts here so clearly.
❓ Can you please name a city or country (even better if a city in America) where "rent caps" created more and better housing, not less?
re: Feudal serfdom
Wouldn't you say that over-reaching government could start being a type of feudal-serfdom... after all government controls who can move in and out of the land, takes a big share of your products and services (taxes) and, like the "lord" in a feudal system, could tell you what to do with your private property and home (see Claire's rent control laws).
Is the real feudal threat not "big and incompetent government that tax, control, and spend" types like Tom DePietro... instead of a family that works hard, fixes up a few homes nicely, and then rents them out at market rate prices to pay for the initial investment and a reasonable rate of return.
The only person in this town who sits on a big and elevated chair (what we use to call a throne) is Tom DePietro.
Also - anyone can become a "landlord". It might not happen overnight... but nothing worth having does... work hard and/or innovate, save money, use that for a downpayment and there you go.
Immigrants do this at an astonishing rate with zero original capital, just hustle. Why can't others?