Local tenant activists have taken a fight that they lost in the City Council chambers two weeks ago to the streets. Just days after the City Council passed legislation to decontrol a portion of the city’s more than 3,000 rent-controlled apartments, dozens of activists have begun to collect signatures to stop the controversial law from going into effect. According to state law, if the activists can gather nearly 1,000 signatures within 20 days of the ordinance’s March 1 passage, they can force the council to put the measure to a referendum before it can be implemented. The council would once again have to vote on the future of the ordinance, but this time they would be voting on whether to repeal it or allow the voters to determine if the ordinance will become law. Activists say they should have no problem collecting the signatures. In the last decade, the council has twice been faced with such a decision on rent decontrol measures, and both times it opted to abandon the issue rather than put it to a costly referendum vote. Tenant’s rights activists like Daniel Tumpson hope that this time will be different. “I want to see this thing on the ballot,” he said Monday night as he stood outside of Starbucks on First and Hudson streets collecting signatures. “This will be the third time we have handed in a successful petition and every time they just bury the issue. They want to sneak this thing through when nobody is looking. But we want the issue out in the open.” City Councilman Stephen Hudock, the ordinance’s sponsor, said that he wanted to see the ordinance go to the ballot if the activists were able to gather the signatures they need. “In 1994, when this came up, I wanted it to go to the voters, but I lost that vote 5-4,” he said. “My position has not changed. My main concern here was improving the rent control ordinance. I’m happy we did that. If political opponents or others want to go around getting signatures, they can do that, but to me, it’s behind us. I’m moving on to the next thing.” If the ordinance is put to the voters, a contentious debate is sure to ensue. The measure was originally introduced by Hudock after city lawyers warned that action needed to be taken to protect low- and moderate-income families that live in approximately 20 city properties where rents have been held down by soon-to-expire federal regulations. Once those regulations expire, many of these buildings might not come under the purview of the city’s rent control law unless the council took action, city’s lawyers argued. Hudock drafted a complex ordinance to tackle the problem. Its principal component would bring 70 percent of the units in the buildings that had been subject to federal regulations under rent control and allow the owners of those buildings to raise the rents in the remaining 30 percent of their units as much as they want once the current tenants leave. Owners of these buildings would be allowed to exercise this so-called vacancy decontrol one time. After that, all units of the buildings would become subject to rent control. Landlords who live in owner-occupied two-family homes would also be able to hike rents to market rates once their tenants leave, according to the ordinance. While Hudock maintains that the changes provide incentives to landlords to upgrade their properties, tenants’-rights activists worry that the changes will lead to the harassment of current tenants by landlords hoping to take advantage of the opportunity to make an extra buck when they leave. Activists also worry that the decontrol of two-family homes will lead to the decontrol of three and four family homes down the road. Hudock maintains that this is not his goal. Out on the street City Councilman Tony Soares has already pitched in to help gather signatures. “The referendum is the most apolitical way to decide this,” said Soares, who opposed the measure when it came up for a vote. “I’m helping them gather signatures because I want to see this go to the people.” Back on the street corner Monday night, Tumpson and Annette Illing, another activist, had little trouble as they trolled for signatures to their petition. Even though most just-off-the-PATH Hobokenites were intent on reaching their destinations quickly during the evening rush hour and it seemed nothing would cause them to stop, a number did approach the two activists as they chanted about rent control changes. “I live in Applied Housing and I’ve been told that this could affect my rent,” said Terry Takeshita after she signing the petition. “I’m not usually politically active in Hoboken, but when it affects my family, I think that I need to come out of my hole a little bit.” While several other residents began signing the petition, Tumpson sang snippets of a song he wrote in 1981 when he first started fighting vacancy decontrol measures in the city. “If you are paying rent, hear what I say,” he sang. “Thanks to City Hall, you’re in trouble today. Pretty soon you may have to move out of town, for the mayor and council did ordain that the rent control law had to be changed.”
Our Digital Archive from 2000 – 2016
