Between 2020-2024, energy costs in New York increased by 30%, and housing costs by almost 20%, but it’s the housing cost that’s behind inflation in our state being higher than the national average. If the state were to invest $5 billion in increasing the stock of high quality and permanently affordable homes for a wide range of incomes, its impact on lowering inflation would be significant and long-lasting. Families would be able to focus on increasing their quality of life in aspects other than housing, or perhaps pay their debts quicker; they would be able to plan for their future, such as sending their children to college or making medical plans, without having to worry about where they’re going to live, and the people who work to power our economy would become members of a much more stable and healthy workforce. Right now, we already spend a substantial amount of public money on tax breaks and subsidies we give to private developers, but we know that even if they held their end of the bargain and build a lot of homes, not enough of them would be affordable, and not enough of them would be for our constituents who are getting displaced – the primary purpose of those homes would still be profits, and not permanent affordability.

With the Permanently Affordable Homes for New Yorkers Act, we would create a public developer that can build or rehabilitate desirable homes in places like the city of Kingston, where no matter how much you make, the quality of your unit will be the same as the others, and you won’t pay more than 25% of your income.

Additionally, we also want to stop rampant price-gouging on the housing stock that already exists. To that end, I have introduced the Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants Act so that upstate localities like ours are empowered to declare a housing emergency and exercise more control over how they would like to opt into the state’s rent stabilization laws, and what type of buildings they would like to cover.

I thank the Kingston Common Council for considering a vote in passing a resolution to support these two state bills, and I urge you to vote yes so that we can take the voice of our community to the halls of Albany.