Dear Editor:
Please realize the deceptive double-speak of the petition to further change rent control and do not sign it.
First it says Hoboken will benefit from the continuation of rent control that protects tenants---then it says 1-4 unit buildings will be permanently exempt from rent control, and the larger buildings can create any rent as the first rent for every new tenant??
They call this made up rent a:"mutually agreeable level between the landlord and the proposed tenant" but all it really means is if a "proposed tenant" doesn't agree--they won't get the apartment.
The next double-speak is saying these rent control exemptions can only happen:"upon the voluntary, uncoerced vacation" of the previous tenant----and then saying the determination of there having been no harassment is a statement by the owner or manager!
Don't sign the petition. Don't vote for this change if it get's on a ballot. Learn more and help us keep Hoboken a multi-income community.
Hoboken Fair Housing Association
Simoncini says: discuss our differences of opinion without name calling, threats and innuendo
But in his earlier post
Simoncini said: so-called tenant activists who are simply a front for lawyers looking to collect their 33% of the returned rent
Talk about innuendo – where does he get off suggesting that the tenant activists are doing anything other than trying to maintain strong rent control protections for the citizens of Hoboken that rent their homes?
Simoncini says: MSTA has never sued anyone.
Of course if he admitted that the exact same people that drive the MSTA bus are the exact same people behind the bogus class action lawsuit, he’d be admitting that they are the same thing – Gormally the lawyer for MSTA AND the class action lawsuit and Mr. Simoncini have been working hand in hand for years. It’s just part of their playbook. Bleeding our city dry and robbing our taxpayers. On the one hand Gormally is in court saying that the class action caused the change in the rent control ordinance that solved the rent control problems, trying to line his own pocket with over half a mil for his effort (taxpayers’ money) and, on the other hand, his cohort is running around our town pretending that the problems with the rent control ordinance are so great that we must remove the most important tenant protections.
Simoncini says: a judge found the law to be arbitrary, capricious and unconstitutional based on a laundry list of problems in the rent leveling office, did not cause the rent leveling office to change its ways.
When will Mr. Simoncini stop repeating this lie? The judge found one narrow situation, a situation in which a landlord did not get a vacancy decontrol prior to 1984 when he had vacancy decontrol form, but no registration statements at a time (prior to 1985) when registration statements were not required. But Simoncini keeps repeating the same lie but quoting only half of the judges comment. Lying incessantly and repeatedly about the same thing will NEVER make this false statement true.
Simoncini says: No other Board has imperiled a bond rating of a City and chilled its real estate market.
Oh brother, this is just too much! Look at any real estate site in Hoboken – there is no chill on Hoboken real estate. Only the wealthy can afford to purchase. The price per square foot is over $500. And now he says the board is imperiling Hoboken’s bond rating? What next? The board is responsible for global warming? The war in Afghanistan?
Simoncini says: it [Hoboken] is depriving itself of needed tax ratables by allowing rents in desirable apartments to be set at 1985 rents for new tenants who are moving here from elsewhere.
Do we have to point out that it is not possible for any unit in Hoboken to have a 1985 rent because rents go up according to the CPI every year and, of course, once every 3 years they go up 25% when a tenant vacates. If a landlord is charging the same rent that they charged in 1985 they are doing so by choice, not because of our rent control protections. Also landlords can pass on ALL tax increases since 1988 to the tenants at any time and 100% of all capital improvements and, if all that isn’t enough for a landlord to get a reasonable return on their investment, they can file a hardship increase and get the rent increased. – This 1985 rents comment is a perfect example of false, misleading, dishonest spin
Simoncini says: $800 apartments for $100,000 earners
Another Simoncini myth designed to turn residents of Hoboken against each other – I’m waiting for the day that he can point to one person in town that earns 100K and pays $800 a month rent. Of course, he never will because he has no facts to back up this lie designed to divide our community while he rapes it.
Simoncini says: Finally The Hoboken Housing Improvement Initiative amendment clearly reads that all existing tenants will continue to live under the existing law, and only NEW residents will be subject to the amendment. there is no threat to anyone who lives here now.
THE BIGGEST LIE OF ALL! Every tenant that lives in a 1-3 owner/occupied building can be given a 60-day eviction notice tomorrow and every tenant that lives in every other rental building in Hoboken can be harassed out. If a landlord can raise the rent to the roof by simply evicting that “pesky rent controlled” tenant, why wouldn’t they? The one protection that tenants in these buildings have is that the rent from one tenant to the next is controlled. If MSTA wins on the ballot that one protection is GONE forever. This insidious petition signals the end to all rent control protections in Hoboken. Tenants and people that have friends or people that they care about who are protected by rent control - Don’t believe a word this hired gun says. He was hired to make sure there is an end to rent control Hoboken. That is his and this group’s ultimate goal in Hoboken. Don’t believe me – read his own words: http://www.hudsonreporter.com/view/full_story/11661868/article-A-new-view-on-rent-control-is-needed-?instance=secondary_stories_left_column
Regardless of what he says on this thread this man is on record as supporting the long-term dismantling of rent control.
So many families who "make it" in this country have pulled themselves up with some form of assistance. Let's leave out the ladders for the next generation, which is facing huge challenges.
(And, for those of you new to this issue, you might be interested to know that Beth Mason's family first lived in a rent controlled apartment which she has credited as helping their young family get its start in life.)
Let's keep the circle going.
". . . reset rents for new tenants who can afford it."
What a stunning insight -- a wonderful, simple, elegant (OH! and FAIR) solution to Hoboken's housing problems. Damn. Why didn't I think of that?
You simply reset all the rents in town for new tenants WHO CAN AFFORD IT.
GENIUS.
Yes, Mr. Simoncini, you're one of the bold, trailblazing creators of the New America, aren't you.
Your credo?
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me . . ."
. . . so you can tell them to go to hell (in fact, you don't care where they go), because THEY CAN'T AFFORD the $3500-a-month rents of your paymasters, which you euphemistically call "market."
Haven't you ruined enough lives in the state of New Jersey? How many dollar-signs are enough?
Well, I am here to tell you that you are a fool, a toady, and a simpleton. You try to bully the city council at every meeting and numb them with your lies, your feigned innocence, your phony politeness.
Your lawsuits are the tantrums of a shrieking five-year-old. You sue the city and then say, oh, that was someone else!
The untrammeled greed of your upstanding "taxpayers association" causes the destruction not just of a few families, buildings or blocks, but of entire cities.
I'd get out of Hoboken if I were you, Mr. Simoncini. Why? Because there are people here -- lots of them -- who hate you even worse than I do.
MSTA has never sued anyone. the class action lawsuit was filed long after i advocated for change. A previous lawsuit, in which a judge found the law to be arbitrary, capricious and unconstitutional based on a laundry list of problems in the rent leveling office, did not cause the rent leveling office to change its ways. I understand that people are upset that i called it the worst rent leveling office in the state. i understand people were upset because i observed the performance of the rent leveling board as the worst in the state. No other Board has imperiled a bond rating of a City and chilled its real estate market. No other Board spends as much on legal fees. no other Office is as unproductive. TRUE.
If Hoboken has an affordable housing problem, it should fix it. right now, it is depriving itself of needed tax ratables by allowing rents in desireable apartments to be set at 1985 rents for new tenants who are moving here from elsewhere. $800 apartments for $100,000 earners is not the solution to affordable housing.
Finally The Hoboken Housing Improvement Initiative amendment clearly reads that all existing tenants will continue to live under the existing law, and only NEW residents will be subject to the amendment. there is no threat to anyone who lives here now.
Sign me,
Jess Wonderin
Among the most outrageous of your exaggerations and untrue statements has got to be this. Maybe you are confusing her with Gormally? Maybe he has made millions undoing rent control in this state? I don't know but I do know the only attorney who regularly represents tenants in this town (most attorneys prefer wealthier clients) makes very little representing them. Some years she spends more of her own money representing broke tenants than she makes in total. But she does it in cases where the landlord has acted outrageously so the landlord can't win merely because the tenant couldn't afford to get justice in the courts. I'm sure she's made less defending the law, which keeps Hoboken a real community and not a bedroom town, than you have made coming in trying to undo the laws despite the damage it will cause the population so landlords who bought property here based on the value under rent control can unjustly profit from undoing these laws.
She was a Hoboken resident when she began her legal career as an attorney representing tenants but got priced out of town like so many other long-time residents.
And calling her "corrupt" is simply outrageous. If she was corrupt she wouldn't be in court beating your side defending the law constantly. She would have been bought off long ago. She is anything but corrupt and it shows how unscrupulous you are to make this false accusation.
Condo owners residing in their condos aren't affected by rent control (duh!) but condo owners who bought up condos they never lived in should be subject to rent control. Otherwise undoing it for condos means every unit will become one so landlords can skirt the law.
Buildings of 4 units are major purchases and many landlords own multiple buildings of that size which constitutes a great deal of the rental units in Hoboken. Calling them "small business owners" is double speak of Orwellian proportions.