Information is the key to any good landlord/tenant relationship.  Being fully informed of your rights as a tenant and what exactly a landlord’s duties and obligations are will help to make sure you are treatly properly and fairly as a tenant. 

In New Jersey, a tenant can only be evicted for cause.  This means tenants can be evicted only under one of the 18 causes or grounds for eviction listed in the Anti-Eviction Act (N.J.S.A. 2A:18-61.1.).  The 18 causes or grounds for eviction are:

• Not paying rent
• Disorderly conduct that disturbs other tenants
• Damage or destruction of the landlord’s property
• Violation of landlord’s rules and regulations
• Violation of lease agreement
• Violation of public housing lease agreement provision prohibiting illegal use of drugs or other illegal activities
• Not paying a rent increase
• Housing or health code violations where:
  
  
  1. The landlord needs to board up or tear down the building.
  2. The landlord cannot correct violations without removing the tenant.
  3. The landlord must end overcrowding or an illegal occupancy.
  4. A government agency wants to close a building as part of a redevelopment project.

• Landlord wants to permanently retire building from residential use
• Not accepting changes in the lease
• Paying rent late month after month
• Conversion to condominium or cooperative
• The owner wants to live in the apartment or house
• Tenant loses a job that includes rental unit
• Conviction of a drug offense
• Conviction of assaulting, attacking, or threatening the landlord
• Engaging or being involved in drug activity, theft, or assaults or threats against a landlord
• Conviction of theft offense

It is important to understand that even if there is one of the above 18 causes for eviction present a landlord cannot simply “evict” a tenant by changing the locks or forcing the tenant out of the leased premise.  A landlord must first go through all the steps in the eviction process and a judge must then enter a judgment evicting the tenant before a legal eviction can take place. 

Mark & Galusha, Lawyers handling landlord tenant matters in Bridgewater, Somerset County, New Jersey

If you are a tenant seeking to redress your wrongful eviction, please contact Mark & Galusha, your landlord tenant attorneys in Bridgewater and Basking Ridge, New Jersey. For your free consultation with a lawyer from our Firm, contact us at 908-626-1001 or 973-440-2311, or tell us your story by clicking the "contact us" page.