Their housing costs were the fastest-rising in America. Could an emergency law save them?
I t’s 2pm after an overnight shift, and Amanda Treasure is lying in bed unable to sleep. She can’t stop thinking about how most of what she brings home from her full-time job as a caretaker – two $900 checks a month – goes to rent for the two-bedroom apartment with a mold problem she shares with her disabled husband, teenage son, and five pets.
Treasure has lived her whole life in Kingston, New York, a quiet city about 90 miles north of Manhattan. She got her first job at 14 delivering papers, and by 16 she was paying for her first car and insurance. The skating rink and bowling alley Treasure frequented as a teen disappeared soon after the IBM factory that once employed thousands of residents closed in the early 1990s, devastating the town. “Now there’s nothing to do here, and the prices are through the roof,” Treasure says. “And I’m working my butt off, but there’s nothing to show. This world is just not what I expected being 52 years old.”
Half of Kingston’s 24,000 residents are renters, but finding a vacant apartment has become nearly impossible. The median rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Kingston hit $1,615 this year – roughly 25% more expensive than three years ago. That’s devastating in a city where the median per capita income is just over $32,000, and nearly one-fifth of residents live under the federal poverty line.
Mayor Steve Noble says the situation is untenable. “We are a close-knit community, and housing is a right people should have access to. But I can’t have an apartment that cost $1,000 three years ago cost $2,250 today, when I know I haven’t raised taxes in seven years in this city.”
What began 10 years ago as a trend of city-dwellers flocking to Kingston as an alternative to the Hamptons was
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