KINGSTON – Mayor Steven Noble has vetoed the Kingston Common Council’s resolution to continue rent control. He said resolution 202 and its findings “fall short of the requirements for declaring an ETPA-related housing emergency for all housing classes.”
In vetoing the legislation, the mayor said he strongly supports continuation of the city’s housing emergency for properties with more than 22 units. “0The Office of Housing Initiative’s vacancy study and testimony make clear that a housing emergency still exists for larger buildings,” he said.
Noble said while he supports the common council’s “ability to make their own legislative findings, the resolution… misconstrues aspects of the 2025 vacancy study “and contains several factual errors. Importantly, this includes a misstatement about the study calculating a citywide vacancy rate and a misunderstanding of the role of the consultant hired by the Office of Housing Initiatives.”
The mayor also said the resolution “also asserts that vacancy survey responses were intentionally inaccurate. Because we know that property owners have a vested interest in thwarting data collection, the Office of Housing Initiatives improved upon prior surveys by requesting vacancy data ‘as of’ a specific that was not communicated to anyone in advance of the survey.”
The mayor said if the council “believes that warehousing occurred, the resolution must contain sufficient facts to support that determination, in light of the 2025 survey methodology. These and other serious concerns about the resolution were communicated to the Common Council by the Office of Housing Initiatives but remained in the approved legislation.”
The mayor said the common council “must swiftly correct the errors in this resolution and include a full and serious consideration of the resolution submitted by the Office of Housing Initiatives, which contained well-documented findings and a path forward that would still include a large number of Kingston tenants.”
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