Hoboken’s rent control law is peppered with references to the mid-1980s, and for good reason. It was during those few years that the city was flipped on its head, moving rapidly from a solid working-class town to a chichi luxury-rental boomtown. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, the lure of “vacancy decontrol” through “substantial rehabilitation” – meaning landlords could circumvent rent control and hike rents through the roof if all the tenants left a building and the owners then made “substantial” improvements – was blamed for forcing families, seniors and longtime Hobokenites, particularly Spanish-speaking residents, from their homes through often morally corrupt means.
Some renters were offered a few hundred or a few thousand dollars to leave modest apartments, unaware that major improvements were on the way and they’d be left behind. Some said their landlords were letting buildings deteriorate to the point where they could no longer stand living with leaking roofs, flickering or even no lights, roaches and rats. And while no arrests were ever made, a string of arson fires emptied several buildings, killing more than 50 people.
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