Rent Control Power Goes to NJ Court When Officials Duck Duty (1)

Judges can raise tenants’ rents if a landlord is blocked from setting increases due to government inaction, a New Jersey appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The legal win for landlords sprang from local mismanagement in Perth Amboy, a 50,000-person town in the New York City metro area. The local government failed to place officials on the local rent-control review board for longer than a decade, blocking a quorum necessary to decide rent-increase disputes above a local ordinance cap, and leaving landlords without the ability to increase below-market rents.

“The absence of such a board creates a void in the rent ...