Dear Editor:
There were some big “misses” in Ray Smith’s articles this week.
Hoboken’s original 1973 Rent Control ordinance was enacted to counter runaway national inflation which created “a critical shortage of affordable housing space” in many municipalities nation-wide, not just Hoboken. While Hoboken had been granted Model City status by this time and the first projects were started towards what much later became known as Hoboken’s rebirth, half the housing stock in town was still considered substandard and the notion of a real estate boom was at least a decade away.
A case can certainly be made against Hoboken’s Zoning Board’s actions given the fact that probably every block in town exhibits evidence of their 90+ percent approval rate containing well over 1,000 variances. I look at four projects from my apartment window alone that never should have been built. That said, I assume the Zoning Board was instructed like the Planning Board to not enforce the 1998 Affordable Housing ordinance because its legality was still being challenged around the state. Due to this perpetual state of “pending,” this is not the best example of the city agencies not doing their job.
However, if one wants an example of the city not enforcing its own laws, one need not look any further than the Rent Control law. As noted in the Introduction of the 1996 report by the Hoboken Task Force on Rent Control Revisions + Modernization (that I chaired), “uneven enforcement of Hoboken’s Ordinance has resulted in tenants not having the protection they desire while rent control opponents have used this as proof that the law is unmanageable.”
This fact more than any other is why the rent control issue has continued for almost 25 years to be the mess it is with both sides being cheated. This is not meant to be a suggestion that the law be repealed, simply fixed to whatever extent it can be after so many years, then properly and consistently enforced.
Hank Forrest