Here is the article from the Jersey Journal, Wednesday, August 7, 2024:

Hoboken council reverses course on rent control deal with landlords, will likely head to voters in November

Measure will likely head to voters in November.
•Updated: Aug. 06, 2024, 4:59 p.m. |Published: Aug. 06, 2024, 4:28 p.m.
By Teri West | The Jersey Journal
After hours of public testimony, the Hoboken City Council sided with pro-tenant voices Monday night and voted down a deal it had struck with landlords that would have amended the city’s rent control ordinance.

The deal had represented the final means of preventing a November referendum on rent control, making it now all but certain that voters will have to decide whether to unravel a key tentpole of the law through a ballot question written by the Mile Square Taxpayers Association, a landlord interest group.
The council’s vote was unanimous and followed a warning from Mayor Ravi Bhalla that if the amendment the council had negotiated with the MSTA passed, he would veto it. 

In voting, council members said they had heard tenants loud and clear, but they expressed trepidation, knowing that they were both surrendering control of the outcome and opening the floodgates to what could become a bitter, expensive election. 

“I think some people are deluding themselves if they think this is going to be an easy victory, but I’m not here to scold anyone,” Councilman Jim Doyle said before declaring that he would side with the desires of the tenant advocates and vote “no.”
Earlier this year, the MSTA secured enough petition signatures to put a referendum on the ballot proposing that instead of being limited to the current 25% rent increase upon a unit’s vacancy, landlords of rent-controlled units should be able to increase rents as much as they want at that time as long as they pay $2500 to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund. 

The certification of the signatures last month started a 20-day clock for the council to try to head off the referendum through a deal with the MSTA. The deal they negotiated would have greatly increased the allowable size of a rent hike in between tenants, though it would have had limitations. Under it, after paying a fee, landlords would have been able to increase the rent by between 25% and 100%, depending on how long the most recent tenant had lived in the unit. 

On Monday, more than 60 people spoke during what became a three-and-a-half hour virtual public hearing before the vote with the vast majority saying they were tenants themselves or were speaking in the interest of tenants. 

The MSTA responded to the outcome by labeling the council as people operating under fear in the face of a “mob.” 
“We empathize with them,” MSTA Executive Director Ron Simoncini wrote in six-paragraph statement. “It is difficult to face a mob. But moreover, we pity them. It’s clear that those council seats mean so much to them that they willing sacrificed their ethics and the health and equity in their city and prostrated themselves to unworthy values and tactics.”

To tenants who pleaded with the council to vote the deal down, it represented a perilous threat that would incentivize landlords to leverage their power to oust them, particularly those who had lived in their units the longest. While defeating the referendum will be a fight, they said, it is a fight that can be won and it is worth it because of how detrimental the alternative deal struck would be. 
“Just like you can vote against this amendment, you can use your influence, your newsletters and your mailing list to get turnout against the referendum (that) you acknowledge is a bad deal and defeat it in November,” resident Anthony Spirito told the council. 

The decision came from an often-divided council after the MSTA had backed it into a corner to the point of having to hold a special council meeting over Zoom following weeks when many of them had been on prescheduled vacations. 

While earlier in the process many council members had seemed to favor approving a deal, believing it to be far preferable to a referendum, by the end of last week, council members both aligned with and opposed to the mayor had said they were undecided on how they would vote.
 
Some attributed their ultimate decision to the scale of the resident response. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten more feed back from people that live in the Fifth Ward than on this issue tonight,” Councilman Phil Cohen said. 
Even as Councilmen Ruben Ramos announced his decision to vote “no,” he did so with the wary tone of a father sending a child off to college, first recounting all he had done to protect tenant’s interest before reaching this moment, and then reluctantly relinquishing authority. 
“I am willing to give them what they’re requesting tonight, rejecting the compromise,” he said of tenants. “Hopefully they are successful in November.”


Here is the testimony of Matt Shapiro, President of New Jersey Tenants Organization (NJTO):


My name is Matt Shapiro. I’m president of the New Jersey Tenants Organization. I have spent the last 52 years of my life as a volunteer advocate for tenants’ rights and rent control, and today I speak on behalf of our many members in Hoboken, and on behalf of all tenants currently protected by rent control in Hoboken.

I intend to speak plainly, as the situation for tenants because of this “compromise” is dire.

Vacancy Decontrol, in any form, is horrible. It says to a landlord – find a way to get rid of your tenant, and we will give you a pot of gold! Well guess what – if there’s enough gold in that pot, landlords will do whatever it takes to get rid of their tenants. Unjustified eviction actions, severely lowered maintenance, 3 am anonymous phone calls, threats, or much worse – whatever it takes to convince their tenants to move out.

In the current rent law, that pot of gold is modest – 25% rent increase every 3 years.  

In the so-called compromise, which you promote as somehow helping tenants, the pot of gold is gigantic – landlords can at least double the rent if they get rid of a 10-year tenant. In some cases, close to triple. When you add the new special Capital Improvement for a vacated unit, it could push the rent above triple. And there’s no waiting for three years. Just get rid of your long term tenants, and the gold will flow. The “compromise” if enacted, will be devastating to tenants.

The MSTA proposed ordinance is just as bad, with an unlimited one-time rent increase. But at least we can have a clear VOTE NO campaign in November and stop it dead in its tracks.

Your landlord-friendly “compromise” is actually much worse, as it would require a separate referendum to undo it. That would appear to be its purpose – to seal in the vacancy decontrol and make it really difficult to undo it. But make no mistake, the tenants of Hoboken will do whatever it takes. If that means collecting signatures for and voting in a referendum, the tenants will do it. If it means filing lawsuits against it, keeping you in court for years spending gobs of taxpayer money, the tenants will do it.

And tenants will not forget any Council member who votes for this landlord-loving “compromise.” You may get landlord money in your campaign coffers, but you will not get tenant votes!

Members of the Council – you need to rethink this and VOTE NO on this anti-tenant “compromise.”

And after you vote NO on the compromise, you should join the tenants in our VOTE NO campaign against the rent control killing MSTA ordinance in November.

We need you to actually be on our side!