Rent Control Changes Up For Final Vote At Hoboken Meeting Wednesday (2024)

After a hearing was held last week, some still believe the Hoboken council is moving too fast on amendments to the city's ordinance.

Posted Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 5:19 pm ET|Updated Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 9:21 pm ET

Still, even after the meeting, some members of the community felt that the council should take longer to consider the changes.

At least one council member acknowledged that she hadn't had a chance to understand all of the changes before the last meeting.

The amendments are set to come up for a final vote at this Wednesday's meeting. (See the agenda here.)

(Got an issue with your rent or housing? Schedule a free meeting with the city's tenant advocate here.)

The Issue

Rents in Hoboken are among the highest in the nation, but rent control laws in older buildings keep increases to the cost of living adjustment, while allowing landlords to pass along surcharges.

Attempts to revise the 50-year-old Rent Control Ordinance have been hotly debated in the past, but some changes have passed. Others have been rolled back after legal challenges.

Last month, the council voted to contract with Sarkisian to fine-tune the ordinance. Amendments were introduced six weeks later at the last council meeting.

The ordinance up for a vote can be found here. At the meeting, it will need two votes and public comment to pass.

NJ.com recently posted this run-down of the changes, which can affect the amount of the increases and which buildings fall under rent control.

In her newsletter, Council President Emily Jabbour summarized the upcoming changes thusly: "Ordinance B-532: Updates to the Rent Control ordinance as part of the ongoing discussions, including clarification of the definition of base and legal rent, clarification regarding legal rent calculation, adjustment of theannual maximum rent increase, clarification with respect to the authority of the Rent Control Board, and adjustment of associated fees."

Councilwoman Tiffanie Fisher said that rent control is a "balancing act," but that without a few more changes, she believes the proposal will hurt rather than help tenants. She wrote in her newsletter, "The most significant issue raised in the proposed changes are seems to be a meaningful economic shift from property owners to tenants. Future tenants to be exact as protections remain for existing tenants. Many are concerned (including me) that this could open up the city to significant litigation and potentially lead to actions that would weaken of our rent control laws. Remember, it is a precarious balancing act. The City Council is having a follow up closed session with Judge Sarkisian before the City Council meeting and I am hopeful we can find some sort of amended language and steps that the Rent Stabilization Office can take that can provide the right assurances and work better for all parties."

She said that renters can call her "and I will walk you through why I feel the [laws] will hurt you more than help you."

People interested in attending Wednesday's meeting can watch on the city's Facebook page, head to City Hall, 94 Newark St., or watch on YouTube.

Recently, rents in the area have risen so high that a Jersey City-based group has rallied for a "Right To Counsel" law that would give low-income tenants a free attorney if facing eviction. READ MORE: Should Tenants Get Free Legal Help To Fight Eviction?

Are The Changes Good Or Bad?

Ron Simoncini, who usually represents the landlords' side as the head of a local taxpayers' association, released a statement Monday.

The statement follows:

For the last 10 months, MSTA has been sharing with the Council and the Administration its perspectives on rent control and necessary amendments to the rent control ordinance, many related to the rogue behavior at the rent control board level and the lack of resources and lack of record keeping integrity at the Rent Control Office, after a judge declared Hoboken’s rent control ordinance unconstitutional as applied.

Among several significant problems with the proposed amendments to the ordinance, the City is increasing the fees it is receiving by more than 300 percent but it is reducing the amount a property owner can increase rents so that it is less than inflation.

And the City is suggesting that if landlords have been deferring rent increases to be sensitive to the current tenant’s financial condition, that their generosity is now going to be punished when they set rents for a future tenant whose incomes usually exceed $100,000 per year? The City has ruled for a generation that these increases could be deferred and property owners have relied on that standard, but in a window into just how arbitrary the City can be, it has not even proposed to grandfather rent registrations that it has accepted as legal.

And if I were a council member and I saw that future adjustment to the rent control law eliminate council involvement, I think I would be a little concerned about where legislative authority went. As MSTA has been asserting, this is the perfect moment to look at the true impacts of rent control and change policies to the benefit of the entire market. Instead, this proposal clearly is an attempt to risk-manage the litigation environment as a result of the horrid performance of the rent control board as well as gesture toward some of the elements in a previous amendment proposal that failed to gain council support again and again. That should be as unacceptable to the public as it is to MSTA. Think about the number of things that this proposal does not solve for:

1. The base year changing to 1985 solves almost none of the problems we have identified that resulted in the hiring of Judge Sarkisian, whose work, we presume, resulted in the amendments related to Board operation (some of which are good). It does not ease administration of the Ordinance at all and it does not create an impetus for non-registrants to become part of the rent control regime. In order to be meaningful, the base year needs to include a roll-up of surcharges and be changed to a date AFTER the original Z-88 was enacted – and to the benefit of tenants, it should be as close to the pandemic as possible, which is why we recommended 2019.
2. The idea that rent increases are anything less than inflation is antithetical to balancing the interests of tenants and property owners. Not one person in Hoboken ever income-qualified for the subsidy that rent control represents – the ordinance blankets the whole market without considering the financial strength of the property owner versus the tenant and their relative capacity to bear increased costs. Only an annual increase that matches to cost increases does that. When you set increases lower than inflation, the condo and single family homeowners bear greater relative tax increases as a result.
3. Nothing in this proposal creates the resources or impetus for the City to actually address the real affordable housing needs it faces.

Other Responses

The Hoboken Fair Housing Association submitted a response to the changes last week here.

See the council agenda here.