Protect Asbury Park – Vote NO on the Referendum

THE CITY COUNCIL ALREADY PASSED RENT CONTROL.

RENTERS ARE ALREADY PROTECTED.

STOP THE DIVISION IN THE COMMUNITY.

VOTE NO ON THE REFERENDUM.

Petitioners’
Referendum Ordinance:

Wrong, Unenforceable, Catastrophic, Inequitable

VOTE NO

REFERENDUM ORDINANCE

Why a NO vote is the RIGHT vote:

Quality of housing stock will plummet
Would not create ONE unit of affordable housing
Will decimate the City’s tax revenue base, greatly compromising the City’s budget
Property taxes will skyrocket to make up for budget shortfalls
More regulation discourages investment into the community
No changes will be allowed to this ordinance for 3 YEARS
Requires owners to submit endless forms and pay excessive fees

Asbury Park’s Rent Control Ordinance:

The City is Already Protecting Renters

Ordinance 2021-5

Key Points:

Caps rent increases at 3.5% or CPI, whichever is greater:

CPI has been below 3.5% for several decades, and is forecasted to remain at 2% or less for the foreseeable future

Real rent protections will actually be in place to help those residents who need it
Vacancy Decontrol alleviates the impact to your taxes and is central to the City’s ordinance

It is the only fair way to balance renter and homeowner interests

Taxes on Single-Family homes will not skyrocket
Enforces compliance with Standards of Service as required by law
Ordinance is flexible and can be amended at any time depending on the City’s needs

Referendum Ordinance is Awful Legislation

The proposed ordinance is incredibly poorly conceived and drafted, clearly an unsophisticated law that is unworkable and inconsistent with its own motivations.

With an eviction moratorium and other emergency measures related to COVID-19 currently in place, no one should be making any long-term housing policy issues as they are not currently needed, and due to COVID-19, the current economic state of the housing market, it is unlikely that there will be rent pressures for some time. This is exactly the wrong time to consider an ordinance like this. Plus, the referendum platform denies a place for dialogue with elected officials and other stakeholder, which is bad public policy.

It fails to address the differences

Improperly Denies Exemptions Under State Law. New construction developers who did not file exemptions from rent control, guaranteed under state law, have no ability to secure their exempt status, as there was no rent control when they built their buildings.

Fails to provide any help for renters in Need

Rent Controls Forces Out Low-Income Earners. That rent control is consumer protection legislation, not a source of affordable housing. Rent control is proven to shut out people in need of subsidies and instead deliver benefits to higher earning households.

Fails to provide any affordable housing

Unintended Consequences that Reduce Affordable Housing Supply. Even though condo units are covered under the proposed Ordinance, it still encourages conversion to condominium and new construction of condominiums, effectively reducing the supply for affordable rentals.

Only New, High-Income Residents Will Benefit

The beneficiaries of this law will be new residents to Asbury Park who will gain the benefit of a discounted rent despite the fact that landlords will not select renters who are truly in need of a discount, because those renters will not qualify to the income standards for the housing.

Will decimate property values and the City’s primary source of Revenue

More regulation will discourage investment in Asbury Park. As development moves out of Asbury Park, visitors will spend their tourism dollars elsewhere. Homeowners and small property owners will see the value of their properties devalued as less money flows into the City.

The value of your home will drop and your taxes will skyrocket

The transfer of the tax burden to Single-Family Homeowners. Study after study has demonstrated that the proven effect of rent control laws is to transfer property tax burdens from multi-family to single-family homeowners.

ASBURY PARK’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING ORDINANCE IS ALSO ALREADY IN EFFECT:

LEARN MORE HERE

Disingenuous political motives are the reason this has occurred

An Ordinance about Political Power, Not Housing Fairness. The proponents of this Ordinance have political aspirations that they are hoping to achieve through creating a power base among renters. But their legislation is so poorly crafted, not only does it reveal their true motivations, it also reveals their lack of fitness to represent the general interests of the municipality, as they would compromise the stability of Asbury Park for their own political ambitions.

The Political Committee Proposing Rent Control Never Studied Rent Control’s Impacts

Renter advocates have mistakenly attempted to equate rent control with protecting from gentrification and assuring affordability, but history and academic studies always conclude that just the opposite happens. There is no quantitative economic or academic study that shows rent control secures affordable housing for those who need it. The lack of vacancy decontrol will prevent needed improvements to the City’s aging housing stock. It forces all renters to accept compromised reinvestment and maintenance when there has not even been a market study to determine how many renters have rent insecurity.

The Political Committee members are politically motivated

“Numerous Asbury Park residents felt it was time to make sure that those who suffered through the bad times don’t get pushed out during the City’s revival. We want to live in a City where economic justice is front and center … While racial segregation was made illegal, economic segregation has kept our beaches and city segregated by race and class. We believe that providing affordable housing all over our city would help end this de facto segregation.”

http://asburyparksun.com/letter-asbury-park-affordable-housing-coalition/

THE CHOICE IS CLEAR: VOTE NO ON THE RENT REFERENDUM