The Hoboken City Council voted in favor of banning rent-setting algorithms like RealPage, following suit on what their counterparts in Jersey City did in May.
By Daniel Ulloa/Hudson County View
32BJ SEIU Political Director Adrian Orozco noted the effort has many champions at both the local and state level.
“It simply affirms that landlords and developers who benefit from our city’s booming housing market cannot collude to fix prices and push rents higher through the use of so-called rent-setting algorithms,” he argued.
Orozco added that RealPage, as well as others like it, sell software to landlords that fixes rent prices through data sharing.
“ … RealPage advertises the ability to raise rents … It’s exactly what antitrust law was designed to prevent,” he also said, noting that they are facing lawsuits from both the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office and U.S. Attorney’s Offices from across the country.
He also specifically mentioned that New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said they unlawfully lined their pockets at the expense of renters in his court filing, as well as that rent in the area has increased 50 percent in the past decade.
“It’s the result of unchecked profiteering. Workers … are among those being squeezed hardest,” Orozco concluded.
Hudson County commissioner candidate Ron Bautista, who pushed to defeat the rent control referendum last year, said it is important to prohibit “algorithmic price gouging” and “collusion,” especially when it is already difficult to negotiate successfully with landlords.
Portside Towers Tenant Association East President Kevin Weller noted they have been fighting Equity Residential for years in Jersey City due to intense rent increases at least in part due to rent-setting algorithms.
“ … We were told the software took empathy out of the equation …The message was essentially the software made us do it,” continuing that he and his neighbors are up against a “price fixing cartel” that recently led to an FBI raid in Georgia
Weller also noted developer lobbyists tried to ban such an ordinance, which was initially included in federal budget legislation, but it failed in a 99-1 vote in the U.S. Senate.
“I urge you to pass it tonight,” he concluded, urging the city to to hold the employees of landlords accountable and threaten them with imprisonment for rent fixing practices.
“This ordinance affects all properties in Hoboken,” 5th Ward Councilman Phil Cohen, an ordinance sponsor, explained, claiming that the algorithms make it impossible for a tenant to cut a deal with a landlord or one of their representatives.
Cohen noted that Platkin’s lawsuit cited Hoboken residents of a Bozzuto-owned property being subject to a more than 30 percent rent increase. Despite Mayor Ravi Bhalla reaching out on their behalf, Bozzuto did not change their practices.
Cohen added that they already passed an ordinance back in April mandating rent increases by algorithm notifications when the rent is more than 10 percent.
“There’s been a constant referral to the market and what the market will bear … This is a commodity that is very sacred to folks, so we have to make sure that we put in the right protections,” noted Councilman-at-Large Joe Quintero.
He argued that landlords always have a lot of leverage over tenants, noting that few actually try to negotiate the terms of their rent/leases, adding that fighting a landlord in court can be very difficult and costly.
Ultimately, the Hoboken City Council passed the ordinance unanimously (8-0), just as they did on first reading last month.
