Virginia Katchmar sleeps in a storage unit in Rochester near Lake Ontario. Four hundred miles away, Sheila Cummings has been living in a homeless shelter in Hempstead, Long Island, since she was evicted early last year from her apartment.

Both women say they would be better off in New York City, where there are more legal protections and services to help people return to permanent housing than in their hometowns.

Though they do not know each other, Ms. Katchmar and Ms. Cummings have joined a growing coalition of homeless people, tenants and their advocates that is pushing the state legislature to expand to all of New York State the tenant laws and other protections available only in the city and a few other counties. With rent regulations set to expire in June 2019, the coalition, the Upstate/Downstate Alliance, is hoping to bring attention to their cause.

“This is a moment right now when the state legislature and the governor have to be thinking about tenant protections and tenant protections as a tool,” said Celia Weaver, research and policy director of New York Communities for Change, which is part of the coalition. “It’s a tool to combat homelessness.”