I have called Jersey City home for over 25 years. After watching the city transform and seeing the growing pressure on long-term residents, I spent several weeks studying the property, tax, housing and redevelopment data to see whether there was a practical solution. 

The proposal is simple: provide property-tax relief to qualifying owner-occupants based on how long they have continuously owned and lived in their Jersey City home. No relief begins until the fifth year.

Jersey City is a remarkable redevelopment success story, but that transformation has come with a growing challenge: preserving the long-term resident homeowners and traditional one- to four-family homes that have anchored our neighborhoods for generations.

Today, only 28% of Jersey City’s occupied housing units are owner-occupied. Our parcel analysis identifies approximately 17,000 probable owner-occupied one- to four-family homes. About 9,300 are two- to four-family properties that also provide smaller-scale rental housing, and approximately 6,000 have at least 20 years of recorded tenure.

For decades, public policy deliberately encouraged redevelopment through tax abatements and PILOT agreements. Jersey City’s audited financial statements show an aggregate conventional-tax differential of approximately $777 million from 2016–2023 for abated properties. When abated properties paid less than they would have under conventional taxation, the amounts still required to fund City, County and school budgets were raised from properties outside those agreements. In practical terms, conventional taxpayers—including Jersey City’s long-standing homeowners—helped carry the tax base while redevelopment was being encouraged.

Those policies helped Jersey City grow. We believe it is now time for an equally deliberate policy to preserve the resident-owned homes that remain.

THE PROPOSED HOMESTEAD PRESERVATION CREDIT

5–9 years → 10%
10–14 years → 20%
15–19 years → 25%
20–24 years → 30%
25+ years → 40% Long-Term Preservation Tier

HOW WE PROPOSE TO PAY FOR IT

The program is conservatively budgeted at approximately $40 million annually: $20 million from Jersey City, matched dollar-for-dollar by $20 million from the State of New Jersey.

WHY SIGN IF YOU RENT? Because this is also about preserving a housing form. Owner-occupied two-, three- and four-family homes provide thousands of smaller-scale rental units. Reducing one major carrying cost does not guarantee lower rents, but it can temper one source of upward pressure while helping preserve mixed-income neighborhoods.

This is a proposal—not finished legislation. We are asking our elected officials to examine the evidence, refine the model where necessary and work with the State to make a preservation program possible.

THE PETITION

We, the undersigned, ask the Mayor and Municipal Council of Jersey City to evaluate and advance the Jersey City Homestead Preservation Initiative; work with the State of New Jersey to secure the enabling legislation and one-for-one matching support necessary to implement it; and pursue a sustainable City funding structure that does not simply shift the cost back onto conventional property taxpayers.