After 6,745 evictions in one NJ county, this city moves to stop ‘crisis’ among renters

🔴 More than 6,700 residents in Passaic County were evicted last year

🔴 Passaic City Council pressured to pass rent control, tenant protections

PASSAIC — Facing pressure from angry renters, the third-largest city in Passaic County is close to imposing new restrictions on landlords.

Evictions in Passaic County more than doubled from 2,652 in the year 2021 to 6,745 in 2024, according to Make the Road NJ, which cited court management statistics.

Get our free mobile app

Local housing advocates said at the most recent city council meeting that the "crisis" is due to rapidly rising rents.

"Most of the tenants in this room have been paying rent increases double, and triple, and quadruple, and quintuple the inflation rate for many, many years," said Mitchell Khan, vice president of the New Jersey Tenants Organization.

Passaic residents push for a rent increase cap of 3%

In response to the growing number of evictions, the City Council is considering passing tighter rent control policies.

In February, the Passaic council approved a rent control measure that capped annual increases to 6%.

However, advocates say that 6% is too high. There are also exceptions for vacancy decontrol, which allows a landlord to jack the rent of a unit when a tenant moves out.

The latest measure would cap rent increases at 3% a year and remove the exception for vacancy decontrol. It passed first reading at the most recent council meeting this month.

It's not just tenants who are demanding change; the measure has support from Al-Tariq Witcher, a landlord and managing director of external affairs at the NJ Fair Share Housing Center.

"In a city where so many working families and immigrants are struggling to stay in their homes, this ordinance is urgently needed to strengthen Passaic's economic resilience," Witcher said.

The ordinance will be up for a final vote at the next City Council meeting on Sept. 2.

Rent control laws in New Jersey

New Jersey does not have statewide rent control laws.

In 2019, Oregon was the first to pass a statewide rent control law. California followed soon after the same year.

However, more than 100 municipalities in New Jersey have some form of local rent control ordinance, according to the Urban Institute.

ALSO SEE: Bailey Lenney, former football player, killed in tragic NJ crash

And in May, the state Assembly passed a bill (A5432) to establish "standards for determining an unconscionable rent increase."

The bill has not yet made progress in the state Senate.

EDITOR'S NOTE: An earlier version of this report cited a statement that misidentified county-wide eviction figures as city statistics. The eviction numbers represent all of Passaic County.

Report a correction 👈 | 👉 Contact our newsroom