Protect Affordability and Reject Ordinance 26-089
Dear Council Member,
As your constituents, we’re urging you to oppose Ordinance 26-089.
Jersey City residents need relief from rising housing costs. This is especially true after this year’s tax increases. We need a City Council that considers who benefits, who pays, and whether our government is making housing more affordable and accessible.
Ordinance 26-089 will increase property taxes, decimate public services, and decrease the availability of new homes. Expanding rent control without income eligibility raises a basic question of fairness: how much benefit reaches the families who need the assistance most?
We also ask the Council to recognize the grave fiscal consequences of the proposed ordinance. The Ordinance will have a disastrous effect on property values, destroying the tax base, and force property tax rates even higher.
There are real families at risk of displacement in Jersey City, and targeted rental assistance should be provided to those in-need. Jersey City needs an affordability plan that uplifts the working families of the community. This Ordinance fails to address either of those concerns. Instead, it raises rents, increases taxes, reduces home values, and makes it harder for the city to pay its bills.
We're calling on you to reject Ordinance 26-089 and to preserve affordability for as many working families as possible in Jersey City.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
What the Rent Control Surcharge Would Cost You
See what Ordinance 26-089 would add to your property tax or your rent.
We look up your 2026 tax bill in the state’s tax list and show what Ordinance 26-089 would add to it.
How we estimate this
- Ordinance 26-089 ends the rent control exemption for new buildings of 25 or more homes in redevelopment areas. Each comes under rent control 30 years after it was built, starting in 2027. That covers 207 buildings and 51,867 homes.
- Rent control lowers what those buildings are worth. We assume market rents rise 1% a year faster than inflation. Controlled rents rise with inflation, capped at 4%. Inflation is 2.5% most years and 6% one year in ten.
- Lower values mean lower taxes on those buildings. We assume their assessments drop by the full amount right away, as they would in a citywide revaluation.
- The city collects the same total, so everyone else’s tax rate rises to cover the gap. About 10% of it lands on other Hudson County towns through the county tax.
- Rent control also makes new buildings worth less, so some won’t get built. We assume that for every 1% drop in value, 1.5% fewer new homes are built: about 188 fewer a year from 2029.
- We hold Jersey City’s total taxable value at its 2026 level, so buildings that open later don’t share the bill.
- These figures count the full cost of the city’s rent control law, across the city, school and county parts of your bill. Cumulative totals add each year’s increase from 2027. Your 2025 tax bill comes from the same state tax list. Both bills are shown before any deductions. For renters and business tenants the 2025 figure is an estimate: the 2026 figure at the 2025 tax rate, assuming the rent did not change. Increase since 2025 compares it with the Tax Bill column, so it also counts the 2026 rise in the city, school and county tax rates and any change in your assessment. The other figures count only this ordinance, not other tax changes. The 2027 figure shows the effect as if it reached 2027 bills, although 2027 values were set on October 1, 2026.
- Renters: New Jersey treats 18% of rent as the property tax a renter pays. We assume your landlord passes on the full increase. Rent-controlled apartments can’t be charged for it.
- Sources: the state’s 2026 tax list (MOD IV) for every bill; Jersey City Code Chapter 260; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics rent and price data.