In a letter to the editor, former Hoboken Councilman Michael Lenz gives his take on why residents should vote no on next week’s rent control referendum.
Dear Editor,
VOTE NO ON HOBOKEN’S PUBLIC QUESTION
As a former rent board member and current small-time landlord, I have some knowledge of Hoboken Rent Control. If you just want the bottom line, my advice is Vote No. If you’d like to hear why, read on.
Hoboken’s Public Question is NOT about Affordable Housing
Approving it won’t allocate any public funds. Its main effect would be to allow landlords of below-market apartments to raise rents significantly.
If Vote Yes wins, landlords could:
1) Claim that the current very low rent tenant moved out voluntarily (SPOILER ALERT – the rent control office is understaffed, and never verifies).
2) Pay $2,500 into the city’s affordable housing trust fund. Nice try, but to truly be an affordable housing law, you have to have a mechanism that builds substantial amounts of affordable housing, and you don’t. The name of the fund doesn’t count for anything, just what it does.
If payment were required for a fund aimed at “ending world hunger” do you think we’d believe It was an “end world hunger” law? I don’t think so.
The initiative targets long-term tenants, many who have occupied their apartments for decades and who pay less than 80% of the market rent. These units (estimated range from 200-500) will see significant increases.
Even under generous assumptions—500 tenants vacating voluntarily—the maximum potential revenue raised would be $1.25 million, enough to, possibly, fund three affordable units at an aggressive cost of about $425,000 each. But wait, I say.
In this scenario 500 folks will have vacated and some of them will want to stay in town. Some of them will have the means to find alternate living arrangements, but many won’t.
So, if only 10% want to stay in town and half of them can’t afford to without help we’ve increased demand for affordable units for Hoboken residents by 25 and supply by three for a net of -22. This isn’t helping.
Approval of the Public Question could put “Very Low Rent Tenants” at risk
The Vote Yes folks push back hard on my last scenario. Some argue that those who leave voluntarily wouldn’t want to stay in Hoboken. When I suggest that some ‘voluntary’ moveouts are less voluntary than people claim, they can get offended.
But even well-meaning landlords may sell to the highest bidder, incentivizing negative behavior towards tenants and inviting bad actors to town. Laws are meant to encourage compliance, but if there’s financial motive to exploit the system, bad actors emerge.
I know very low rent tenants who are scared. They see this change to the law as a means for landlords to profit by pushing them out of their homes. There is nothing in this law to allay their fears.
Team Anti Rent Control seems willing to say anything to get a win
Their previous attempts to weaken rent control failed and the facts don’t support their arguments about “tax relief” and “real investment in affordable housing.”
Fortunately, a coalition of people including volunteer members and leaders of HFHA, DSA, the newly formed HUT and many others have provided support to the Vote NO side.
Vote Yes dismisses as “hysterical,” critics’ claims that they are making things up. Then they turn around and make up more claims that aren’t true. They claimed in their last mailer that their law reinforces “Anti-harassment laws.” I
n fact, their law is silent on harassment and Hoboken doesn’t have any anti-harassment laws to reinforce. They claim to provide tax relief, but the law is silent again and they make no credible case that any tax relief will be forthcoming.
They claim to be addressing Hoboken’s affordable housing shortfall through major investment, but as we just discussed, this law invests zero public dollars and building the three units that the most generous assumptions allow would requires 500 people to vacate their units of which at least 25 would be vying for those three.
This would make our shortfall worse, not better.
Vote Yes is working to make this a battle in which facts don’t matter because the facts aren’t their friends. Why else would they accuse fair housing volunteers and a Jewish city council person of working with Hamas rather than defending the text of their law?
I worry their campaign of confusion backed by lots of money, could get this bad law on the books.
If Vote Yes wins, they’ll be back to end rent control once and for all
When rent control is used well it helps stabilize communities under stress. It offers a necessary roadblock to massive disruptive rent increases.
Rent control slows but does not stop lower income folks from being forced out of their homes to make way for folks able to pay more.
Over the past 50 years, Hoboken has seen periods of very strong demand and relative stability, but the threat remains. Vote No.
Michael Lenz
Hoboken resident
If vote yes wins the city will be able to obtain more tax revenues and they will finally be posing their fair share.
Once yes wins, the value of those rent control buildings will increase as their rent rolls will increase over time.
If the city does another revaluation of properties, which it’s due for one, the value of those will increase and so will their taxes.
And though you will say that in a reval some win and some lose and it evens out, that is not true in the long term as property values increase in Hoboken
Tell this political dinosaur to go the way of the rest of his crew.
This guys remerges any time he seeks attention and political relevance
Did he draft this letter over lunch with a developer in a diner?
Sad!
Go easy on this civic-minded activist! A hack is somebody who leverages political activities for personal gain, and he’s mostly not done that!
Thank you for responding.
I appreciate the civil tone of your letter and the clarity of your argument. I guessed this was what the tax relief argument was based on but it got too confusing to try and explain your position before I responded to it.
Now I will.
Your argument is clear and simple. If this passes below market rent tenants will be forced out in favor of new tenants who will pay higher rents and when we have a reval that will mean that the assessments will come down on the other property.
This is true. But is an argument it has some problems, first I compliment you for telling the truth that this is designed to get out the long-term tenants. It is it can and it will if it passes and you make clear that you think seeing them go would be a good thing. This is the core dishonesty of the vote yes campaign because they pretend these people will stay Even though they’ve created a mechanism to make them go
I applaud you for your honesty
As for the tax relief your argument depends on are having another reval
The last one didn’t happen until properties were assessed at 20% or less of market value. We are still many times higher than that and there is no political will to have a reval which is very contentious.
So thank you for your letter in which you admit the true target of this campaign is not building affordable housing it’s getting rid of some folks the people running this campaign are offended by.
And further thank you for admitting there’s no tax relief until we have a reval which no one’s talking about.
And again I appreciate your constructive tone. I wish we had more of that in other elections.
Michael, I will address several of your counter arguments.
The process of having people pay their fair share started under Zimmer and the revaluation of properties.
As we are aware, in a reval, some win and some lose with respect to the change in their property taxes. But Zimmer had to know that the older homes that were owned by long-term residents and seniors on fixed income, would have their tax bills more than double. And the consequence would be that those residents that provided a certain economic and generational diversity would be forced to sell their homes to higher income buyers that could afford it.
That said, the council and mayor pay lip service to affordable housing and barely enforce any housing issues or take up the Air BnB’ing of rent controlled apartments which is a known in Hoboken.When was the last time we had any major affordable housing built in Hoboken, what was it, the apartments on 12th and Jefferson and Grand. And while we are redeveloping the HHA and will build senior housing on the lot on 11th and Willow, that pales in comparison to the amount of luxury development we have had. Further, the 90/10 luxury/affordable housing requirement is a joke. All that does in the long-term is create a barbell effect in which we end up with 10% low-income and 90% luxury with out middle class wiped out.
Finally you make some grand assumptions about who I am or who I represent. I am an independent person and not active on the Yes or No side. I will not post it on Facebook or try to twist intentions as Cheryl has done by using the exchange on her HFHA page. I do not have any insight into the true design of the referendum, if you are curious about the true intent I would suggest asking your friend Tony Soares since he is one of the petitioners for the referendum.
I commented on your op-ed because I respect your opinion and know you will keep it civil, which is something that has been lacking in society from all sides. I like a healthy debate and know you do to.
Ha-ha. Noticed you avoided address the true intent of the referendum which is to ensure that we push ALL of the long-term renters out of their homes so that some developer can buy the buildings and either tear them down or gut them. Appears that you only want the highest income people living in Hoboken other than in the Housing Authority where you want to shove all off the poor and middle glass
Well as Cheryl stated on Historic Commission hearing about a neighbors home sale
” This house wasn’t on the MLS… I wasn’t able to bring a buyer…”
So teardowns are okay for some when there’s a commission involved?
Delusional. Maybe Cheryl would have brought a buyer that would have moved into it instead of tearing it down.
Hope didnt tell them to “OVERPAY”
Cheryl bring a buyer for 1.5 Million? Oh so much for being an activist….
Sorry for any offensive assumptions, they were unintentional. The only assumption I intended iwas that you supported Yes, and that from your name.
I agree Hoboken has a record of failure on affordable housing and of addressing the looming threat to Hoboken’s little remaining economic diversity.. I’d not exempt state and national policies from blame, but largely we are on the same page. If you want to collaborate on a joint letter on that topic sometime send me an e-mail.
As to your main point, there is a clear distinction between this new law and the reval. Before the reval owners of a fairly new condo was often paying twice as high a percentage of their properties market value than owners of older property.There were lots of reasons this occurred and probably will occur again, but none comes close to being a valid justification for the unfair allocation of tax burdae then occuring.
The older property owners were getting a totally unjustifiable deal and it was probably a violation of law. Either through the courts or by political action this was bound to end. The question was when. Until it did, older property owners (including me) were getting over on new condo owners. I believe it went on far too long and credit Mayor Zimmer and her council folks for getting the reval done when she did.
Rent control has been a fact of life in Hoboken for half a century and remains legally permissable. I’d wager more than half of current owners with very long term tenants acquired their buildings knowing that tenant was in place, and probably paid less in consequence. Voting Yes won’t right a wrong. I’llt picks winners and losers, and its backers will mostly be the winners.
Michael Lenz