“On Tuesday, hundreds of tenant activists converged on Albany to lobby for a package of nine bills that could strengthen protections for the city’s one million rent stabilized tenants, and expand protections across New York State.
Rena Marslin, 58, used a vacation day to travel from Valley Stream, Long Island, to join the rally. She said she takes care of her mother and has had a tough time finding her own housing.
“My apartment in Williamsburg was bad—crumbling paint and rats and roaches—I had to move in with my mother in 2017. I have to fight for my rights. If I don’t, who’s going to do it for me?”
“We get left behind all too often,” Rashida Tyler of the Kingston Tenants Union told us. “Upstate is always the last to get any kind of relief and we’re suffering up here. We don’t pay the same rents they do in New York City, but upstate we’re rent-burdened. In Kingston, over fifty percent of the population is rent burdened. They’re paying over thirty percent of their incomes in rent.”