Coalition Releases Report on Unjustified Evictions in New Jersey

A coalition of tenant advocates released a new report urging the New Jersey courts to improve their process for reviewing residential eviction complaints. According to data collected and analyzed by the coalition, the "Unjustified Residential Evictions in New Jersey" report suggests that eviction judgments or defaults are entered against as many as 29,000 tenant families each year in cases where the court lacks jurisdiction.

The coalition includes the Housing Justice Project of the Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall Law School, the Lowenstein Center for the Public Interest at Lowenstein Sandler, Volunteer Lawyers for Justice, and the Housing Justice Program at Rutgers Law School. Ashley Maddison '19, Managing Attorney of the Housing Justice Program at Rutgers Law in Camden, contributed as co-author of the report. Volunteer students and attorneys from eight organizations assisted with data collection efforts.

After reviewing 1,378 complaints, including a sample from each county in New Jersey, the coalition found:

· 69 percent of eviction complaints filed by landlords contained at least one legal deficiency, such as landlords failing to attach mandatory eviction notices when the landlord acknowledged the tenancy was subsidized; landlords seeking late fees, attorney fees, or other fees not permitted under the law; and landlords failing to attach required notices when they sought eviction for reasons other than nonpayment of rent;

· 15 percent of complaints filed had three or more legal deficiencies; and

· the courts issued deficiency notices in only 11 percent of the cases in which landlords had filed deficient complaints.

Notably, in landlord-tenant courts across New Jersey, 97 percent of residential tenants do not have a lawyer to defend them from eviction. Without legal representation, self-represented tenants have little-to-no capacity to identify the legal deficiencies that regularly lead to dismissals in the few cases in which tenants have lawyers.

The report’s findings highlight the pressing need for continued reform and oversight to ensure that eviction judgments are entered in New Jersey’s landlord-tenant courts only when there is a legal basis to do so. According to the coalition of tenant advocates, until changes are made, the landlord-tenant courts will continue to enter eviction judgments where they lack jurisdiction, causing numerous tenants to lose their homes when they should not.