According to a realtor.com report, median rent prices across the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas reached a record high in February, hitting nearly $1,800.

The Hudson Valley is feeling the impact.

A recent study of apartment vacancies in Kingston paints what some say is a dismal picture of rentals in the city.

"We are definitely at a point where I believe we’re at a housing emergency," Mayor Steven Noble said.

A recent vacancy study completed by the Office of Housing Initiatives for the city found that of all apartment buildings in the city built before 1974 with six or more apartment units, only 1.57% were vacant.

Under the state’s Emergency Tenant Protection Act, or ETPA, any community with a vacancy rate under five percent is eligible to declare a housing emergency.

"We have a supply and demand issue going on in Ulster County," Noble said. "In Kingston, we have been building a lot of housing, especially a lot of workforce affordable housing, but it hasn’t been able to keep up with demand, and with more and more people moving to Ulster County and to Kingston, we’re just seeing prices rise." 

Conducted in April and May, the study found that of the 1,270 rental units included in the study, only 20 units were vacant and eight were not occupied, but were off the market.

"The places that people have to move around from place to place is so limited that landlords can basically charge whatever they want," Noble said.

That’s why Noble wants the city’s Common Council to declare a housing emergency under the Emergency Tenant Protection Act. It allows communities to implement rent control and rent stabilization to keep prices in check.

"That would create a rent board that would allow us to control rents and make sure that people that live in complexes that were built before 1974, they will be able to have better control over rent increases," Noble said.

A county rent guidelines board would be able to control how much landlords in the city can raise rent.

"That’s a lot of people, a lot of families, that have been seeing, unfortunately, over the last few years, five, 10, 15 and sometimes a 20 percent rent increase, and that’s just not sustainable," Noble said.

Noble said building more rental units and implementing rent stabilization, in addition to the city’s new good cause eviction law, will help make the city livable for everyone.

He hopes other communities follow suit.

"We really hope that our fellow jurisdictions around us also do the same thing too because I don’t want just our Kingston residents to be protected, I really want everyone in Ulster County to have these same protections," Noble said.