When Lauren Sumahit answered the door of her apartment in Newburgh, New York one summer day last year, she was expecting to find an exterminator to take care of the mice and bedbugs that had become fixtures of the apartment. After months of dealing with pests, a broken and unsafe electrical system, and spotty heating, Sumahit and her husband had reported the conditions to the City of Newburgh’s building code enforcement office, which advised their landlord to send an exterminator and make the necessary repairs. But the day after the Sumahits made the complaint, it wasn’t an exterminator who showed up, it was a messenger—sent by their landlord—to deliver a 30-day eviction notice.

The couple spent the next eight months crammed with their 10-year-old daughter and newborn baby into a motel room—a room that was largely paid for by the county’s Department of Social Services.

Many upstate tenants like Sumahit have little recourse for violations such as these. While tenants in New York City and a handful of other municipalities currently benefit from at least some legal protections, an estimated five million tenants in the state essentially have none. But affordable housing advocates are fighting to change that. On June 15, the state’s renter protection laws are due to expire, and as the housing crisis spreads across the state, the date marks a potential opening to spread tenant protections across the state, too.

In 2000, 40.5 percent of rental households in New York State were “rent burdened,” meaning they paid more than 30 percent of their income in rent. Today, after the foreclosure crisis forced tens of thousands of New Yorkers out of their homes and into the tight rental market, the number of rent-burdened households has climbed to nearly half. Homelessness in the state increased by 43 percent between 2007 and 2017, the highest rate of increase in the country, according to HUD.

New York City’s oft-discussed gentrification problem is hardly the only explanation for these numbers. The eviction rates in small to mid-sized cities like Auburn and Gloversville have surpassed those in New York City. Poughkeepsie’s rate, the highest in the state, is an alarming 71 percent higher. And the share of rent-burdened tenants in many municipalities rivals New York City’s, too. In recent years, rent-burdened Brooklynites have fled upstate to places like Newburgh, Beacon, and Hudson, stressing rental markets, driving up rents, and pricing-out long-term upstate renters.