Hudson County DSA is an organization of working people across the county with a shared vision of a future with security, dignity, and real freedom for every person. We believe, without qualification, that housing is a human right and that an injury to one is an injury to all. Our current effort to fight Ron Simoncini and Miles Square Taxpayers Association’s initiative to undermine rent control protections in Hoboken is led by our Hoboken members and other Hoboken residents who want to see a future for their city that isn’t restricted to the very rich. The truth is that if we were not in Hoboken, we likely wouldn’t be present in this fight – not one of us is being paid for our work, and we all have day jobs, so it’s likely that MSTA’s attempt to quietly gut rent control protections wouldn’t have been on our radar if our organization didn’t include Hoboken tenants who would be directly affected and are simply keeping tabs on their own city’s politics.

 

If either MSTA’s ballot measure or City Council’s “compromise” pass, the results for tenants in Hoboken will be catastrophic. Not a single person isn’t already aware of the exorbitant price of rent in Hoboken as it is – the only residents who are paying anything close to what most people would consider reasonable rent are long-time tenants in rent-controlled units, disproportionately seniors, whose landlords would be immediately incentivized to force them out of the apartments that have been their homes for decades just to increase their profit margin. Further, those who can currently afford the rents on controlled units without the benefit of that decades-long residence would be effectively denied a future in the city. By passing their “compromise,” City Council would be telling these people that in order to start a family, in order to get married or split up, they will need to look for housing elsewhere and leave the unit they’re currently occupying open to decontrol and inaccessibility to anyone but the wealthy.

 

The argument for this “compromise,” supposedly mitigating the damage of the passage of the full ballot measure while giving MSTA the lion’s share of what they want, is either a cynical excuse to cozy up to the landlord lobby or rank political cowardice, and in either case is a gross dismissal of the agency of the people of Hoboken. City Council should not be negotiating and rolling over on behalf of tenants who have no seat at the table and if they truly want to stop the harm that a successful referendum would bring they should be using their positions as civic leaders to mobilize opposition to the measure. People will be at the polls for the Presidential election in November and we trust the people of Hoboken, we ask that City Council trusts them too.

 

Housing in Hoboken is also not the only issue here. The ballot measure in Hoboken is one part of a large-scale effort by Simoncini to undermine rent control protections and drive up rent prices throughout the state. Our Hoboken members are leading the charge to protect their own community, and the people and Council of Hoboken should stand with tenants and not greedy landlords in their city but City Council currently and the Hoboken voters in November have a larger social responsibility here to tenants all across New Jersey to not set the precedent that it’s acceptable to undermine anyone’s access to housing. Where our members who live outside Hoboken are helping fight MSTA’s attack on rent control, they’re doing it first in solidarity with the local tenants who will be immediately affected and second because Hoboken tenants aren’t the only ones at risk – if rent control can’t be saved in Hoboken, every other city will be fighting this same battle in the near future. 

 

While local DSA members are organizing in Hoboken with help from their neighbors and fellow DSAers, MSTA is attempting to smear us as outside agitators. Let’s look at the facts here: Ron Simoncini, the public face of the ballot measure, lives in Ridgewood. While both our and MSTA’s efforts are focused on mobilizing voters in Hoboken, our members are speaking to their neighbors about the real content of the legislation and its potential impact on the community, whereas MSTA has paid canvassers to collect petition signatures with a vague and misleading line about “affordable housing.” While the measure would allegedly create as many as 700 new affordable units, no one is disputing that it would remove as many as 8,000 already existing affordable units. The idea that this group of landlord lobbyists with a clear financial incentive to displace rent control tenants is a legitimate political actor and representative of the interests of Hoboken, but tenants who live in Hoboken represent some sort of shadowy conspiracy, is absolutely ridiculous. We’re here now in solidarity with our neighbors and community members, we’ll be here to fight the referendum in November, and we call on Hoboken City Council to have the political courage to do the same. 

 

Send the Council a letter and take action here

Join the Hoboken City Council Meeting Call Monday, August 5th 7PM

RSVP for our debrief call after the vote, Tuesday, August 6th