By Tia Turner, NLIHC Project Manager of Our Homes, Our Votes Campaign and Brendan McKalip, NLIHC Our Homes, Our Votes Intern
On June 17, members of Make the Road New Jersey submitted a petition with more than 500 signatures to place a rent stabilization referendum on the November ballot in Passaic. The initiative would lower the city's current rent increase cap from 6% to 3%. Passaic is one of New Jersey’s most rent-heavy cities, with 73% of units rented and 81% of renter households cost-burdened. Corporate landlords have increasingly acquired more properties, particularly in Passaic’s Black and Brown neighborhoods, while simultaneously filing evictions at higher rates than smaller landlords, typically for nonpayment of rent. Now the city is facing a deepening eviction crisis, with filings rising from 2,652 in 2021 to 5,168 in 2022 and 6,745 in 2024. If approved, the measure would help slow displacement and predatory speculation in the city.
Recent tenant organizing has already prompted local policy changes. Passaic expanded the number of tenants protected by rent stabilization and capped rent increases at 8% for older multifamily units, later lowering the cap to 6% plus a pass-through fee. The ordinance also allows increases of up to 20% for “below-market” units. Advocates argue that the 6% cap is too high and that these loopholes fail to protect low-income tenants and immigrant families from displacement.
Make the Road NJ argues that lowering the cap to 3% would better protect renters who are already stretched thin. Their report with Popular Democracy in Action found that doing so could protect more than 40,000 households from homelessness and return $4 million annually to renters, supporting local businesses and municipal revenues. As tenants push to lower permitted increases to 3%, they are also calling for additional reforms to improve Passaic’s rent regulations including vacancy control, closing loopholes like “below market rate” increases, expanding coverage, and strengthening infrastructure for oversight and enforcement.
As communities across the nation lose their existing affordable housing stock to rent hikes, rent stabilization is both vital for those most harmed by rising rents and displacement and a pragmatic policy choice to safeguard existing lower-income housing amid expected FY26 housing cuts. This initiative in Passaic, New Jersey, highlights how civic action at the local level can put housing directly on the ballot. We encourage partners to uplift this story as a model for connecting voter mobilization efforts with tenant-led campaigns. To learn more about organizing a successful ballot measure campaign for affordable homes, see our report here.
NLIHC’s Our Homes, Our Votes campaign tracks, reports on, and analyzes housing and homelessness ballot measures. For an archive of Our Homes, Our Votes ballot measures summaries and analyses, visit: www.ourhomes-ourvotes.org/ballot-measures.