Rafi Córdova , Ward 1 Council Candidate, Unveils Comprehensive Housing Justice Platform
Rafi Córdova , Ward 1 Council Candidate, Unveils Comprehensive Housing Justice Platform
Rafi Córdova, a candidate for City Council in Hoboken’s 1st Ward, today released a comprehensive platform for housing justice, committing to uphold and strengthen the laws that promote equity, accessibility, and predictability in housing. “In my role as Chair of the Hoboken Rent Leveling and Stabilization Board, I have personally seen what is and what isn’t working in Hoboken’s existing tenant protections, said Rafi Córdova. “As your City Council representative, I will work to accomplish concrete legislative goals to promote housing justice through tenant protections.”
The Córdova housing justice platform is outlined below:
Overview
Housing justice applies to all of us. I believe everyone deserves a suitable and reliable place to call home; however, our society places far too many barriers up for all of us to make that a reality. A commitment to housing justice means a commitment to everyone who wishes to call Hoboken home, from the most vulnerable to the most privileged; housing justice is a commitment to uphold and strengthen laws that promote equity, accessibility, and predictability in housing.
I am passionate about achieving housing justice for all, yet helping our most vulnerable neighbors who may be suffering from homelessness, mental illness, or disabilities, and also helping our seniors is of particular importance to me. But I also know that even those who face none of these challenges need and deserve protection from exploitation, illegal eviction, and from unexpected increases in living or housing expenses. Housing justice is for all of us, on behalf of all of us, and for the benefit of the community we all live in. As a City Council member, I will fight for housing justice for everyone in Hoboken, whether you are a tenant or landlord.
I will represent and fight for Hoboken’s varied constituents
Landlords
While corporate landlords control a significant portion of Hoboken’s housing stock, it is important to remember that a sizable portions of Hoboken residents are also landlords. Many of these neighbors rent out investment properties, others are seniors on fixed incomes, living off rents from real estate purchases made decades go.
One major challenge to landlords is staying abreast of municipal requirements and regulations that sometimes change, either in their substance or their administrative processes. I am committed to helping landlords carry out their end of the pursuit of housing justice, and to making sure they also receive their due and fair earnings and protections. Landlords need to be able to run their businesses smoothly without incurring avoidable fees. Housing laws do not need to be a mystery; we need a clear campaign of educating residents about their rights and obligations, and I am committed to doing this for the First Ward.
Renters
Renters make up 65% of Hoboken’s population, and I myself am a long-term renter. We face a range of vulnerabilities, whether we live in expensive luxury complexes, older smaller buildings, or anything in between. I am personally grateful that we have existing municipal rent control laws, statewide tenant protections and resources, and a range of affordable housing programs. But, we can do much better in Hoboken.
I support exempting mom & pop landlords from unfair taxation
Currently Hoboken’s Business alliance levies a tax on all multifamily rental properties but does not assess a tax on investment condos creating a lopsided burden on small mom and pop landlords. When elected I will propose an ordinance to exempt multi-family rent controlled properties that are not corporate owned and which have never benefitted from the 30-year state exemption from rent-control from the Business Alliance tax levy.
I support strong tenant protections
Legislatively, one of my main priorities will be tenant protections, as recent months have exposed how sorely increased protections and education around tenant’s rights are needed. This was most evident with regard to our newer, non-rent-controlled properties where the post-COVID rental market resulted in many of our residents receiving unaffordable, exorbitant rental increases. Hoboken also has a long history of tenant activism and active renter groups starting with Por La Gente (for the people) which formed during the time of the infamous Hoboken fires followed by the longtime established tenant advocacy non-profit group The Hoboken Fair Housing Association and most recently the private renters’ Facebook group, Hoboken Renters. In my role as Chair of the Hoboken Rent Leveling and Stabilization Board, I have personally seen what is and what isn’t working in Hoboken’s existing tenant protections. As your City Council representative, I will work to accomplish concrete legislative goals to promote housing justice through tenant protections.
I support preventing unconscionable rent increases through legislation
New Jersey’s state law against “unconscionable” rent increases applies to every single tenant in New Jersey, whether or not we live in rent-controlled buildings. Although our rent control laws define maximum yearly increases, our non-rent controlled properties are exempt from those restrictions and the state law is the controlling authority on yearly increases. However, the law does not define what is (or is not) “unconscionable” and recently this has led to an environment where many corporate landlords have been getting away with blatantly excessive increases. Since the pandemic, many renters have been faced with 30% and even 40% increases year after year, far outpacing income growth! As your City Council representative, I will help tenants organize and fight the unconscionable increases that so many corporate landlords have been demanding. Together, we can curb the trend of our friends and neighbors being “priced out” and displaced from Hoboken via unconscionable rent increases.
More concretely, I propose to clearly define legal and illegal rent increases through legislation similar to that which was adopted recently by the city of Newark. The legislation I will introduce the first year I am in office will cap all rental increases in non-rent controlled buildings at 7.5% per year, codifying an interpretation of “unconscionable” as any rent increase above 7.5%. While this is above Newark’s 5% rate, it is an amount which measures the stability needs of tenants with the increasing costs faced by landlords. I also intend to promote the inclusion of this same 7.5% cap for residential rentals in any of our redevelopment agreements. I believe in the long run such caps will create a greater sense of predictability and a stronger sense of community with less transience.
I support strengthening Hoboken’s rent control laws
In February 2023, the Hoboken City Council passed controversial changes to the City’s rent control laws. Despite the controversy, I believe the 5% cap on yearly increases was a positive, protective step. But there is more to be done. The administrative process of obtaining legal rent calculations needs to be clarified and improved. Tenants face surcharges that can amount to hundreds of dollars per month, and the Ordinance needs to be amended to control and cap these surcharges in a way that enables landlords to collect their due without overburdening tenants. And we need to make sure that the rent control office and board are resourced and supported in upholding and enforcing our laws.
I support right-to-counsel legislation
Hoboken may have been the first municipality to provide tenant advocacy services which heretofore has been a line item in the city’s annual budget. In New York City and Jersey City, legislation was adopted for new developments, requiring developers to allocate funding for free legal counsel for tenants pertaining to violations of rent control laws and unfair evictions. I propose to do the same here in Hoboken through new legislation, that will allocate a 2% fee on new developments to this fund. I propose this fund to be available to any tenant of Hoboken for a wide range of tenant/landlord issues, which can first serve to subsidize, and then hopefully replace the costs of the Tenant Advocate which the City currently provides. Let’s place the burden of this cost on those who are in the best position to stem the harm caused by poor rental practices.
I will see to the specific needs of each residential community
Sometimes, specific buildings have specific needs, unique to their own situation. Marine View Plaza (MVP for short) – with its 432 rental units – currently operates under a PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) agreement whose particular terms exempt it from municipal rent control, but provides its tenants with other specific protections. The MVP PILOT expires in 2027, and I know from spending a great deal of time with my neighbors there that MVP tenants want and need an extension of that agreement. When elected, I will work with my colleagues to examine ways to extend this PILOT or procure a new one to ensure that MVP residents maintain appropriate protections. Unfortunately, Hoboken has a history of sitting on the sidelines as vulnerable residents are displaced and pushed out of their homes. I will not sit by feeling bad but will fight to protect MVP renters and their rents.
Likewise, residents of several buildings in our ward have been exploring questions about the validity of “new construction” exemptions to rent control under which many buildings in Hoboken operate, three of which have been found in the last two years to be doing so fraudulently. I had a front row seat to these investigations as Chair of the Rent Control Board, and as your City Council representative, I will bring my knowledge, experience, and intolerance of consumer fraud to ensure that corporate landlords do not take advantage of an exemption to which they are not entitled.
I support increasing affordable housing set-aside requirements
Affordable housing specifically works to both protect our most vulnerable neighbors and ensure a socioeconomically diverse community by providing subsidized rents for moderate, low, and very low-income residents. But its provisions need to be enabled, enforced, and protected. I support a higher percentage of mandatory set-asides of affordable units for new developments, as well as funding a fuller staff for the division of housing to administer affordable housing programs.
Currently, Hoboken’s requirement of affordable housing in new, larger developments sits at anywhere from 10 to 12%. Other urban cities, like New York City, routinely have new developments that mandate far more of a percentage than Hoboken. One of my first acts on the City Council will be to put forward an ordinance to increase this required amount to 20% to match New York City’s. We cannot bear the burden of a status quo in which hundreds of people are stuck on a seemingly endless waiting list to find a place in these units.
I support creating new, senior-only housing in Hoboken
I fully support an upcoming project Hoboken is undertaking at 11th and Willow where the City negotiated with a developer to build senior-only housing. I believe that in new developments, where 12% (I propose to make this 20% as stated above) of the units are required to be set aside for affordable housing, we should also set a percentage of this for affordable senior housing. Our seniors deserve more options on where to live in Hoboken, and setting aside more dedicated, permanent housing for seniors will alleviate the housing crunch for this valuable part of our population.
Community Land Trusts
On March 15, 2017, the City Council passed a resolution unanimously committing Hoboken to exploring the creation of a Community Land Trust (CLT), yet nothing has been explored or pursued. As your First Ward councilman, I will pick up this exploration and work to bring a CLT to Hoboken.
Simply put, a CLT is a mechanism for extending affordable home ownership to a community, typically at below market rates. Today there are over 225 CLTs in the United States, where individuals previously priced out of the system are building equity. CLTs have proven to be a way to ensure long-term affordability. Because CLTs are committed to preserving housing affordability, creating one presents another way that Hoboken can retain some measure of our dwindling economic diversity.
As a councilperson, I will work with my council colleagues, the administration, interested stakeholders and parties, and housing justice experts to make the community’s desire for the implementation of a CLT a reality.
Tear Downs
One of the biggest threats to both Hoboken’s historic character and the economic diversity of our residents is the ongoing tear downs of existing properties. Currently the land use laws do not specifically reference consideration of any possible negative impact to the public when a variance is requested to tear down or substantially rehabilitate a rent-controlled property. As council representative, I will work with my council colleagues to amend our municipal land use laws to require consideration of the elimination of a rent regulated unit as one of the negative criteria to be considered in connection with a request for a variance. Additionally, I will seek out and explore options, legislation, or programs that the city might consider to balance the loss of below market rental housing via land speculation or property conversion.
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