The power dynamic at Dutch Village Apartments on Washington Avenue favors the building owners, several tenants told Spectrum News on Tuesday.

"They're creating homelessness," said retired social worker and former city alderwoman Ann Marie DiBella.

DiBella was at Dutch Village visiting a single mother who is scared she may get priced out, along with several others. Some tenants said their rents went from as low as $1,200 per month to as much as $1,600 per month.

"We've been trying to help them, and we've been hitting roadblock after roadblock," DiBella said. "The landlords, unfortunately, are unresponsive and have shown no empathy for families."

The practice, currently, is completely legal, but that is likely to change.

Municipalities with a apartment vacancy rate of 5 percent or lower can opt into the Emergency Tenant Protection Act, or "ETPA," which was passed by the legislature and signed by the governor earlier this year.

Opting in to the package of regulations would allow a local board to limit annual rent increases to 3 percent or lower, as opposed to the 30 percent hikes some are facing at Dutch Village.

Mayor Steve Noble said the Dutch Village situation is a clear example for why Kingston should opt in to the ETPA.

"To be able to come up with this additional money is almost impossible," he said during an interview on Monday, "so we're really working to try to get this act passed. Kingston would be the first upstate community to be able to do so."

For the moment, since there are not any protections in place yet, the mayor's office has been connecting tenants with other legal and housing services in case they end up getting forced out of their apartments.

Spectrum News reached out to the complex owner, J Dutch Village LLC, to ask why rent is going up, why the increases are not the same for each tenant, and what improvements might be planned. No one has returned those phone calls.