Bard News

Bard Student Research on Housing Justice Cited in Times Union Article “Evicted in Kingston: Voices from a Crisis”

Of 481 properties in one section of Midtown Kingston, 275 (black dots) are owned by non-local owners, according to a study conducted in 2020 by Bard professor Kwame Holmes and his students.

According to a recent Times Union article, the city of Kingston, New York, doesn’t keep track of corporate housing ownership. “But Kwame Holmes, a professor at Bard, and his class did a deep dive on a chunk of Midtown Kingston in 2020, which led to some revealing findings,” the article cites. “Of 481 Midtown properties, non-locals owned 275 . . . Limited liability corporations owned 87 properties, 10 of which shared names with corporate landlords operating in states across the country.”

In 2020, Kwame Holmes, scholar in residence in the Human Rights Program at Bard, taught a class that examined how housing inequity manifests in Kingston and other areas of Ulster County. Holmes and 13 of his students geocoded and collected information on hundreds of properties in Kingston’s Midtown section to study the data on property ownership and its impacts on the city’s residents. “These dynamics illustrate the extent to which land in Kingston is a site of profit extraction, and very little of that capital directly benefits local residents,” states the Bard report, which produced findings that were shared with community leaders and stakeholders. The class, Housing Justice Lab, was a collaboration of Bard’s Environmental and Urban Studies and Human Rights programs and part of the Bard Center for Civic Engagement Engaged Liberal Arts and Sciences Program.

Further Reading
Bard College Human Rights Professor and Students Study Urban Displacement and Gentrification with Kingston Housing Lab