Dear Editor: This Wednesday, Feb 16, 2000, the mayor and council could pass amendments to Hoboken’s Rent Control Ordinance that could deprive many tenants of their rights under rent control and could result in their eviction from their homes. The proposed amendments to rent control contain two new ways that landlords can jack up rents to today’s astronomical free-market levels. Both involve “Vacancy Decontrol” (“VD”), which would allow a rent to be increased to full market level when the existing tenant vacates his unit. VD destroys rent control while appearing to protect the existing tenants, since supposedly no rent decontrol can happen until the existing tenants vacate their unit. But actually VD encourages the landlord to use any means necessary, including harassment or eviction, to get their existing tenants out, to obtain a vast increase in rent. Twice before, in 1989 and 1994, the mayor and council amended rent control to allow VD, and both times referendum protest petitions signed by thousands of citizens stopped the amendments from going into effect, demanding that the amendments either be repealed or put on the ballot for a democratic referendum vote. Both times the mayor and council repealed their amendments rather than allow the public to have their say. The first of the proposed VD amendments would allow the vacancy decontrol of the rental unit in an owner-occupied two family house. Since in such a building the tenant is not subject to protections against eviction under the NJ Just Cause for Eviction Law, the landlord could merely evict the tenant to obtain the much higher decontrolled rent. Under the current law, which allows no such VD, the landlord could evict the tenant, but would have no incentive to do so since he would not be able to obtain the decontrolled rent. Thus VD provides an incentive for a landlord to evict his tenant. The second proposed VD amendment would allow housing, such as Applied Housing, Church Towers and Clock Towers, which is for a limited time subject to rent subsidy and regulation contracts with (federal or state) government agencies (“GAs”), to be given an automatic vacancy decontrol of at least 70 percent of their units when the contracts expire. In the 1970s, many buildings in Hoboken were renovated with funds obtained from GAs under contracts requiring landlords to accept regulation of rents by these GAs and to accept GA subsidies as partial payment of rents received from qualifying lower income tenants. While these contracts are in force, the authority of the participating GA to regulate rents preempts municipal rent regulation. But when the contracts binding the landlord to such GA regulation expire, the authority to regulate rents automatically reverts to Hoboken’s Rent Control ordinance, and the rent the landlord is receiving from the GA at that time becomes the rent which can be charged under Hoboken rent control. The proposed rent control amendments do two things for landlords of units financed by GAs: (1.) they redefine the units as exempt from Hoboken rent control while they are under GA contracts, and (2.) they allow 70 percent of the units to be vacancy decontrolled after the contracts expire. City officials pretend that this is intended to “bring the subsidized units back under rent control” and “protect the subsidized tenants”, but it actually does the exact opposite: it removed 70 percent of the units from rent control and encourages the landlord to get rid of the current tenants so that they can get the higher decontrolled rents. Aside from endangering tenants residing in units subject to VD, the proposed. Ordinances would undermine rent control in an even more insidious way. All other landlords who are not given VD privileges would be victims of unequal treatment under the Rent Control Law. They could sue to have the entire law struck down as unfairly favoring one group over another. And that would be the end of rent control. Approximately 70 percent of Hoboken’s residents are tenants, so the repeal of rent control would cause hardship to thousands of residents. The preamble to the proposed amendments states that “the transition from regulation to a normal market of free bargaining between landlord and tenant” is “an objective of city policy…” Both the original Rent Control Law and the proposed amendments declare in their preambles that rent control is necessary for the health, safety and general welfare of Hoboken’s citizens. And both times the mayor and council began to dismantle rent control with VD amendments in 1989 and 1994, thousands of citizens stopped them, demanding that the amendments be put on the ballot. Why then is the destruction of rent control “an objective of City Policy”? Is it not rather an objective of a small minority who would profit at the expense of thousands of others? Shouldn’t such a major change be put on the ballot as thousands have demanded? No citizen has been given sufficient time to understand or weigh all the implications of these amendments. It is wrong to pushed them through with so little exposure to public scrutiny — the damage that may result cannot be undone. If you want to attend the public hearing on these amendments, come to City Hall this Wednesday, Feb. 16, 7 p.m. Sign up at the front of the room before 7 p.m. or they won’t let you speak. If you want to join the opposition, contact me. Daniel Tumpson