During the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey famously adopted some of the strongest renter protections in the nation to fend off a mass wave of evictions and homelessness.
In the summer of 2021, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law rules that protected and assisted renters who had been financially impacted by the pandemic, according to a news release from the governor’s office, in part by extending a moratorium on evictions in some cases. An additional $500 million was allocated for rental assistance and $250 million for utility assistance.
In a nod to landlords, the legislation ensured that New Jersey’s moratorium continued through August of that year for low-income residents, with a mechanism to phase it out by the end of the year. And by 2023, more than 10,000 families each month across New Jersey received a notice that their landlord filed for eviction.
Now, state legislators are moving a controversial bill that aims to further help certain landlords still facing barriers, namely the owners of hundreds of hotels and motels who are seeing homeless families move in for lack of anywhere else to go.
Specifically, the bill would create a distinction between residential tenants and transient guests of a hotel or motel to determine who is protected and who is not.
Three months
The bar would be high. The bill would require people living in a hotel or motel to meet a “multi-factor” test to determine whether they are a tenant or a short-term guest before a property owner can evict them from a room. For a person to be considered a tenant, they would need to have stayed for three consecutive months or longer in the same room and prove their intent to stay for a long period by changing their primary address on their driver’s license to the hotel or motel’s address, among other measures.
“In essence, [the bill] codifies into statutory law much of what courts have already used to determine the differences between a residential tenant and other occupants,” said state Sen. Troy Singleton (D-Burlington), the primary sponsor of the bill.
“By codifying these terms, it helps protect both hotel and motel owners as well as occupants,” Singleton added, in his statement.
The bill passed the Senate committee last week, but housing advocates are concerned that the legislation could exacerbate homelessness in the state.
The bill comes as lawmakers have heard consistent concerns for nearly two years from motel owners about the eviction process they have to go through in order to remove a nonpaying person from their hotel or motel, because they are considered a “resident” and not a guest.
In New Jersey, the average eviction proceeding takes about six weeks, according to Maura Sanders of Legal Services of New Jersey.
“We have gotten a lot of feedback from hotel owners about how badly they struggled as a result of executive orders that were put forth during the pandemic, which really kind of changed the entire scope and nature of what was deemed to be a hotel guest,” said state Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen), who sits on the Senate Community and Urban Affairs committee.
The state’s non-eviction orders were expanded to include guests at hotels as well, Schepisi said. Many hotel owners ended up not being able to evict, according to Schepisi, with people staying in their rooms for “extraordinarily long periods of time.”
Real losses
Hotel owners, including Mayur Chheda of Atco-based Infinity Hotel Group, are in favor of the bill.
“We’ve lost out on earning money and earning our living and the living of all our associates and employees that work at the hotel and all the expenses that go along with running the business,” Chheda said in a recent interview with NJ Spotlight News.
But while the bill passed the Senate committee last week, housing advocates are concerned that the legislation could exacerbate homelessness in the state.
“They (hotels) have become the de facto shelters, because we don’t have enough shelters,” said Linda Flores-Tober, executive director of the Elizabeth Coalition to House the Homeless.
In New Jersey, there is a shortage of over 214,000 rental homes that are affordable and available for extremely low-income renters, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Currently, there are 24 families housed in Union County hotels, thanks to the nonprofit, according to Flores-Tober.
Under the bill, a person would also be considered a tenant if they are receiving, or in the appeals process to receive, emergency assistance benefits and the hotel or motel is serving as temporary housing. But they would lose tenant privileges if their emergency assistance was denied or exhausted.
“We need to be really careful during a time when we have a housing supply and an affordability crisis … not to pass anything that could make the state’s most vulnerable people even more vulnerable or at risk,” said Helen Kioukis, associate director of policy and advocacy at the Camden Coalition.
The community-based nonprofit works to improve care for people with complex health and social needs, using a “housing first” approach that aims to end homelessness for people facing long-term housing challenges.
Landmark ruling due in days
The pending legislation also comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is about to rule on a case that has sweeping implications for how cities across the country address homelessness and is considered the most consequential case in decades concerning the rights of homeless people.
The court is expected to issue a ruling in City of Grants Pass, Oregon. v. Johnson in coming days. A ruling upholding a Grants Pass ordinance would make it easier for communities across the nation to clear out tent encampments, even if no available housing or shelters exist. In late April, the court heard oral arguments on the case, with a majority of the justices appearing to side with the city.
In New Jersey, evictions were one of the leading causes of homelessness last year, up from 14.10% in 2022 to 18.51% in 2023, according to a report from the state Office of Homelessness Prevention.
Across the country, 7.6 million people — including 2.9 million children — faced the threat of eviction each year between 2007 and 2016, according to an October report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Black Americans, despite making up only 18.6% of all renters, account for over half of those affected by eviction filings and 43.4% of people evicted, according to the report.
In New Jersey, there is also a shortage of over 214,000 rental homes that are affordable and available for extremely low-income renters, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Extremely low-income households have incomes that are at or below the poverty guideline or 30% of their area median income, according to the coalition.
In March, Murphy signed affordable housing legislation to create a new, streamlined framework for determining and enforcing municipalities’ affordable housing obligations under the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel doctrine and the state’s Fair Housing Act.
The process created under the new law will replace the role previously played by the now-defunct Council on Affordable Housing, or COAH.
Still, concern remained among housing advocates, including Sanders of Legal Services of New Jersey, who testified before the Senate Community and Urban Affairs committee last week in opposition to the hotel bill.
“We don’t want a situation where this gives license or a road map for property owners to evade eviction protections that exist right now in certain circumstances,” testified Sanders, the chief counsel at the nonprofit.
“But we recognize that there is a need, in certain circumstances, for standards and we think that what’s there [in the current law] is already sufficient and does that,” she said.
