While picking up a bowl of Froot Loops spilled by her one-year-old daughter, Shonda Decker told Spectrum News due to her family not having enough money to move into an Ulster County apartment, their landlord cut them a deal.

"He told us to give him the titles to the vehicles," Decker said, "all three of them."

Decker said, this past spring, the family had come up with $1,100 for the first month's rent, and still had to pay another $1,100 for a deposit, plus another $1,100 for the last month's rent.

The landlord suggested using the cars as collateral, while the family paid off chunks of their bill each week. Decker and her husband did not feel right about handing over the titles, but felt they had few options.

"We just gave them to him," Decker said, "because I didn't want my kids sleeping on the street."

Until June 14, when a sweeping package of rent reform laws went into effect, using cars as collateral for rent was legal, according to multiple legal professionals and housing advocates in the Hudson Valley.

Decker said neither she nor her husband signed the titles, and have since asked multiple times for their landlord to return the titles.

"He said no. The only way [we're] going to get them back is if we go to the DMV with him to put a lien against the cars," Decker said.

Juanita Velazquez-Amador, an organizer with the Kingston Tenants Union, said she is "flabbergasted" by the alleged renting practice. She said tenants in situations like the Deckers must put their concerns on record with county officials.

"I also suggested they file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission," Velazquez-Amador said, during an interview Thursday morning in Kingston. "So they can investigate this landlord and see if this landlord has done it to anyone else."

Reached by phone Thursday, the director of the Ulster County Human Rights Commission said the commission will launch an investigation as soon as it receives a complaint. No complaints were filed as of Thursday afternoon.