Saturday, July 30, 2011
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board

Anyone who has rented an apartment can tell you that a lot can go wrong in five years: A small leak ignored blossoms into an expensive repair. Overcrowded rooms lead to unsanitary conditions. Tenants who hoard newspapers or pets can make life miserable for neighbors.

That’s why a bill proposed by state Sen. Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May) has caused dismay among tenant advocates and municipal leaders. The bill limits how cities and towns conduct building inspections.

Van Drew says local inspections are redundant with state oversight and costly to building owners. The state’s 55 inspectors do a fine job, in his opinion, of inspecting buildings with three or more units every five years. And that should be enough.

It’s not. The state Senate gave the bill a home, but the Assembly should move to evict. In many cities, tenants need more frequent inspections to ensure their buildings stay livable. It’s a bulwark against encroaching decay.

For more than 40 years, the law has given cities and towns the option of conducting their own rental apartment inspections. At least 88 municipalities do so, according to the League of Municipalities, which opposes the bill.

Under Van Drew’s proposal, municipal fire code, construction and change in occupancy inspections would be automatic. But other health and safety concerns — that neighbor with 15 cats, that long-neglected leak — wouldn’t be addressed unless a tenant complained. Or the state did its own five-year inspection.

Expecting tenants to call and complain is unrealistic. The people occupying some of the oldest housing are elderly or poor, or recent immigrants, many of whom fear eviction.

Not surprisingly, landlords have lobbied aggressively for the bill.

The Star-Ledger’s Jarrett Renshaw reported the New Jersey Apartment Association contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Van Drew and other sponsors of the bill.

Municipalities charge a wide range of fees — as much as $100 an apartment in the case of Orange — to cover inspection costs, some of which are done as often as once a year. That is way overboard.

But how about establishing a standard and reasonable fee, rather than simply ending the inspections?

Van Drew said that’s an alternative worth examining. His fellow legislators should take him up on that opening for a better bill that doesn’t shortchange tenants.