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Jersey City tenants claim landlord used dead fish to force them out
By
Mike Hayes
Published Dec 3, 2024
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Mike Hayes
By
Mike Hayes
Published Dec 3, 2024
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A group of Jersey City tenants living in rent controlled apartments claim their landlord’s employees placed rancid smelling fish in a vacant unit earlier this year as part of an effort to force them out of the building so the owner could raise the rent.
When the odor became too much to bear, the tenants at 336 New York Ave. called the fire department.
Anna Bassett, who has lived in the building for 14 years, captured a video reviewed by Gothamist of firefighters breaking down the door to the vacant apartment next to hers in March.
“Oh! Right here! This damn fish!” one firefighter said.
“Somebody put that there,” another firefighter said, pointing to several dead and rotting fish strewn about the apartment.
Another tenant, Marc Rosenthal, said his family later found fish in a different vacant apartment next to the unit where he lives with his wife and 2-year-old daughter. He said only the landlord and his employees had the keys to the vacant apartments.
“It’s sort of like psychological warfare,” Rosenthal said.
He and other residents claim that ever since the Brooklyn-based real estate company Jersey Mountains 6, LLC bought their building in 2023, the owner has engaged in a calculated campaign to get them to leave. The Jersey City Times first reported that the company filed an application with the city’s Rent Leveling Board earlier this year to raise the rent.
Basset and Rosenthal said that in addition to the fish, the landlord let the trash pile up in the basement, fired the building’s super, and hasn’t cashed their rent checks for months. They believe it’s a scheme to show they aren’t paying so they can evict them.
“We put that money aside as we pay every month,” Rosenthal said.
Zevy Stein, an employee of the landlord, said the tenants’ story about the dead fish and other allegations are false.
“We had no involvement or knowledge of it whatsoever,” he said.
Tenants raised the stinky episode at a Rent Leveling Board hearing in July. The real estate company claims it can’t cover the cost to run the building and is entitled to substantially raise the rent. Under the city’s rent control ordinance, the board could order the rents to be raised so that the landlord doesn’t lose money.
Currently, the three remaining tenants that live in the six-unit building pay just $540 per month, according to Stein, well below the neighborhood's market rate. Matthew Sebera, an attorney for the landlord, told the board that his client wants to increase the rent for each unit to around $1,850.
The fight highlights the tension around affordable housing in places like Jersey City, where rents have skyrocketed over the past few years. According to real estate platform Zumper, in Jersey City – where more than 70% of residents rent their homes – the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,290, making it the second most expensive U.S. city for renters after New York City, where the average is $4,300.
Representatives of the company that owns the buildings have appeared at two Rent Leveling Board hearings in the past six months. Both times, the board voted to push off its decision to the next meeting.
Sebera told the board that when the company bought the building his client was under the impression that it would be totally vacant. The attorney said that the owner is operating the building at an annual loss of more than $116,000 due to the low rent that is being collected.
“Even after the proposed rent increase is approved, the rent will remain significantly below the market rate for the area,” Stein told Gothamist.
The tenants told the board that they have filed complaints with the city under the anti-harassment ordinance for renters. Bassett said she’s also filed a criminal complaint over the fish incident in municipal court.
The Rent Leveling Board has scheduled another meeting for December. Both Rosenthal and Bassett acknowledged the board could still rule that their landlord can raise the rent.
Tagged
new jersey
housing
Mike Hayes
Mike Hayes covers equity and access to opportunity in New Jersey. He joined WNYC and Gothamist in 2023. Before that, he worked as a freelance journalist writing about policing and criminal justice. He has written for ProPublica, CNN, HuffPost, BuzzFeed News and The Appeal. He is also the author of the book, “The Secret Files: Bill De Blasio, The NYPD, and the Broken Promises of Police Reform.” In 2019, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
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