Jersey City tenants declared a rent strike at five separate buildings on the city’s west side, alleging issues ranging from neglect, pests, and no on site building superintendent.
Photo courtesy of the Jersey City Tenants Union.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
“They just don’t care to fix anything. The kitchen floor is in awful shape. They put some screws in the kitchen floor tile so that they don’t move around too much. It’s an awful thing. We just gotta go on strike to get what we want,” Charlie, a tenant at 154 Belmont Ave. where a rally was held last week who declined to give his last name, said.
“I’ve been living in this building 40 years. Nothing gets done, they want me to get out. Rats, mice, holes in the bottom, holes on top, and they still have the nerve to make me pay for water,” added fellow building tenant Luneste Alexender.
429 Bergen Ave., on rent strike since November, was joined this month by 150 and 154 Belmont Ave., also owned by Amir Ben-Yohanon. The Belmont buildings were previously without heat in the winter of 2024 along with 35 Kensington Ave., as HCV first reported.
Ben-Yohanon owns these buildings through a separate LLC from 429 Bergen Ave., a common practice among Jersey City landlords who may have dozens of LLCs obscuring their real estate portfolio in the city.
Tenants at 19 and 25 Kensington Ave. are also withholding rent from Optimum Properties.
“I learned about this building a while ago but just recently I just learned the severity of how people are living here. I’m talking rats biting peoples’ toes, what looks like cracks in drooping walls,” Bergen Grand Tenants Association President Liv Malone declared at the rally.
A tenant in the crowd interjected that the building at 429 Bergen Ave. has “water coming in everywhere.”
“So I’ve just really enjoyed getting to know everyone who lives here and thinking about how they can get to live in a home that’s safe and that’s clean. Because I can promise you that the landlord that we share, Amir Ben-Yohanon, does not live like this and the only way that that will change is by the people living here deciding it’s done and that’s what you guys are doing here,” Malone concluded.
Eli King, an organizer with Jersey City Tenants Union, echoed that sentiment without mentioning calling out any specific landlords.
“Landlords know their power and they’re not afraid to use it, to neglect basic living standards in buildings they own to maximize the profit from their investment. Tenants are coming together and using our power: there’s more of us than there are of them and every dollar of those profits is money that we work for,” he asserted.
“Both of these owners own massive portfolios in the city and we’re not going to stop with these buildings or with these landlords. Anyone who is ready to get organized and fight back against their landlord, come talk to us.”
Ben-Yohanon did not return an email seeking comment on Sunday, while Optimum Properties could not be reached for comment.
