Bayonne 1st Ward Councilman Neil Carroll is continuing to push for rent control and other affordability measures in the Peninsula City, stating an a sit down interview that “this is a moment to seize and I hope we seize it.”
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“There’s been numerous instances of people calling my office to talk about the hardships that they’re facing with respect to affordability, and at this moment, it’s affecting almost every community – every member of every different community that Bayonne has,” Carroll said while sitting at his office desk at City Hall last week.
“And we have an elderly population that’s been living in their two-family homes and their one-family homes for many generations and now they want to make sure their kids and their grandkids can stay, which is a tradition in Bayonne and I’m sure other places as well.”
For over a year, Carroll has pushed for bringing back rent control and workforce housing, among other initiatives, points he reiterated in a letter to the editor last month.
Rent control was most recently effectuated in Bayonne between approximately 1973 and 2011, and given that massive rental hikes are becoming commonplace, the downtown councilman believes it’s time to bring it back.
“Many people have the misconception that we’d be returning to 1973 prices, but that’s not the case at all. If you reinstitute it, it would be at 2025 prices … Essentially as if it never went away,” he declared.
“So if someone moved into an apartment that would be governed under rent control, in theory, if you reinstitute it in 2025, let’s say the rent was $2,000 a month. They would then be governed by the maximum allowed increase, roughly around three percent here, that the landlord could give.”
He further stated that he believes rent control is a social and moral issue that would be better named “rent stabilization.”
“We need to make sure that these individuals have the dignity of knowing what they can count on.”
When talking about affordable housing requirements for new developments, Carroll said it would be a case-by-case basis, but would like to see 20 percent become the norm.
“The discussion we need to start having, and in this city, we’ve had a lot of good people, we’ve got a lot of representatives whose hearts are in the right place, whose minds are top notch, but we need to have this conversation and there’s a stigma that goes along with it and so I think some people are reluctant, but we need to get passed it, and the way to get passed it is education,” he also said.
He defined workforce housing as a ”no cost option” since the government is not involved (no vouchers) and is strictly for individuals who earn the area median income.
“It gives them an apartment and an opportunity to know what’s coming next based on their income, based on their drive and motivation to work good jobs and local jobs.”
He said workforce housing, as the name indicates, would be reserved for teachers, police officers, firefighters, nurses, among other local jobs, that could potentially be paid for via countywide workforce housing programs.
Finally, when asked about the naysayers who say this is political grandstanding related to the 2026 mayoral race, Carroll said there’s no merit there whatsoever.
“When I think something is right, I think it’s right. When I think you are going to block out the sun for the little old lady in her one- or two-family home, that’s not right,” he asserted.
“We need a plan and we need to make sure that there’s a vision and that the vision makes sense for the majority, most amount of our citizens. If we can make sure that’s the best for 100 percent, that’s the dream … We’re in a place now where we can really plot a course for an amazing next 10 years: This is the moment to seize and I hope we seize it.”
