After lobbying by city and county officials, Hudson County has been included in the Major Disaster Declaration in the wake of Tropical Storm Ida. As a result, Jersey City residents and business will now have access to federal aid.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop had called it “absolutely crazy/shameful that Hudson County was not included” on a list of counties declared disaster areas.
Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla agreed, tweeting “Many residents & businesses suffered tremendous damage – I saw businesses that had to scramble to buy flood pumps, rip out floors, pay a contractor for repairs & suffer the loss of business.”
Jersey City has been uniquely slow in distributing money under a federally funded rental assistance program, according to an article published today in HuffPost. “Jersey City offers a case study in why so much of the federal aid is still not getting to the people who need it” writes Washington Bureau Chief Amanda Terkel.
According to the article, Jersey City denied 800 of approximately 1,100 applications for rental assistance, largely because the applicants did not live in owner-occupied buildings.
Adam Gordon, executive director at Fair Share Housing Center in New Jersey, told HuffPost that he wasn’t aware of any other program in New Jersey ― including the one run by the state itself ― that imposed that condition.
As a result, as of Sept. 9, Jersey City “had approved just 45 applications and handed out $450,000, out of the $7.8 million provided by the federal government.”
The decision to restrict funding to individuals in owner-occupied buildings came from Mayor Fulop according to a source who requested anonymity.
Mayoral Spokesperson Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione told HuffPost that the city wanted to first “focus on buildings where the owner lives and relies on the rental income for sustaining their own home as opposed to an owner who has a multiple investment properties or is a larger developer in the city.”
“We knew that if we broadly open the program, a couple of the very large developers/landlords that are more organized would exhaust the funds with their several hundred unit buildings,” she told HuffPost.
“We were very clear that we opened that program for 2 weeks (owner occupied), and we were very clear that after 2 weeks we are expanding to slightly larger buildings, and then again 2 weeks later larger buildings” she also said.
Gordon, for his part, apparently acknowledged that getting rental aid to landlords of owner-occupied buildings, who are often more financially vulnerable than larger landlords, might make some sense. “That said, from the tenant’s perspective, whether or not they’re renting from a small landlord or a large landlord, they still have the financial burden and the need,” he added.
However, the article also points out that Jersey City was much slower the county and state in setting up its program, has confusing messaging on its website and is working against a federal deadline to distribute the money.
New Jersey’s eviction moratorium for middle-income renters ended Wednesday, with courts starting to hear some of the 83,800-plus residential eviction cases landlords have filed since the start of the pandemic.
But there is no tidal wave of people losing their homes and getting booted onto the street. Yet.
Instead, the process started with settlement conferences. Courts brought landlords, tenants, and attorneys into the same room — or rather, Zoom breakout rooms, because courts are still mostly virtual — to try to come to an agreement about back rent owed. Without consensus, those cases will go before judges for trial in coming days and weeks.
So despite the moratorium lifting, the action in many courts Wednesday still centered on commercial eviction cases, which resumed in June.
Affordable housing advocates had lobbied hard for both federal and state extensions of the residential eviction moratorium, saying many people continue struggling during the ongoing pandemic.
But the federal moratorium ended last week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the CDC exceeded its authority when it tried to extend the ban until Oct. 3. New Jersey’s eviction moratorium ended Wednesday for renters making at least 80% of their area’s median income. The state’s poorest residents will be protected through the end of the year.
Staci Berger, president and CEO of the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, applauded state leaders for ensuring low-income renters will be protected until Dec. 31. But New Jersey has such a shortage of affordable housing that people of any income who get evicted have nowhere to go, she said.
“Evictions are not good for anybody, but they’re especially bad for young families and children,” she said. “What we’re going through is hopefully a once-in-forever pandemic. We should be doing everything we can do to keep everyone safely housed. If that means corporate landlords don’t make the same money they made in 2019, that’s what shared sacrifice is.”
Roughly half-a-million jobless New Jerseyans will see their unemployment benefits lapse next week, and the state doesn’t plan to extend them, Gov. Phil Murphy announced Monday.
The so-called unemployment cliff comes with the Sept. 6 expiration of federal unemployment benefits that have provided residents with hundreds of dollars each week during the pandemic.
“We recognize the impact that this will have on some families facing unemployment issues,” Murphy said. “To support New Jerseyans through suffering through the economic impacts of the pandemic we have invested in rent-assistance, food-assistance, child-care assistance, health-care affordability assistance, and other assistance programs we have set up programs which are funded through billions of dollars of federal coronavirus relief programs.”
The announcement means three federal programs — Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, and $300 weekly supplemental payments — serving roughly 500,000 New Jerseyans will sunset next week, though about a fifth of those residents may be eligible for a separate extended-benefits program.
The benefits expiring next week extended unemployment benefits to individuals who were otherwise unqualified and allowed residents who had burned through their regular unemployment benefits to receive federal assistance.
The governor cited cost as the driving motive behind the decision, saying an extension would cost the state no less than $300 million each week, with the potential for costs to climb higher.
“We’re talking about well more than $1 billion per month to maintain this benefit at its current level,” the governor said at Monday’s virus briefing.
President Joe Biden last week urged states facing high unemployment rates to use funds provided by the American Rescue Plan to defray the impact of the lapsed programs, but Murphy said Biden and other federal lawmakers should be the ones to act.
“The proper way to extend federal unemployment benefits is through federal action, not a patchwork of state ones,” he said, adding that no state is extending these benefits beyond Sept. 4.
The state’s tranche of American Rescue Plan money was worth more than $6 billion.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called on Murphy to use $250 million to forestall an automatic increase to an unemployment tax levied on employers. Those collections go toward New Jersey’s unemployment trust fund, which was depleted by record joblessness seen during the last 18 months.
At 7.3%, New Jersey’s unemployment rate numbers among the highest in the nation.
After spending months without a stable roof over her head and crashing on a friend’s couch, Jackson rented an apartment in Pemberton perfect for her and her three kids. She had saved up some money from her jobs at Burger King and as a teacher in a preschool.
Once the pandemic shuttered schools, she had to leave her jobs to take care of her kids, 9, 5, and 2 years old. Her weekly $231 of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and the supplemental $600 courtesy of the federal government wasn’t enough to cover all her bills, but it was a lifeline.
That lifeline ends next week, when Jackson will be one of 500,000 New Jerseyans — and one of 7.5 million people nationwide — to fall off the unemployment cliff, as federal benefits halt Sept. 6. After extending jobless benefits three times since the pandemic began, Congress declined to extend them again.
“Everything is ending now, and it’s another fast turn I’m taking,” said Jackson, 33. “I’m just thinking, how am I going to survive again?”
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and the Pandemic Unemployment Emergency Compensation Fund extend benefits to people who typically aren’t eligible or claimants who have exhausted state benefits. The Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation provided the additional $600, which was lowered to $300 when benefits were extended in January.
NyKia Jackson says without unemployment benefits, she will struggle to provide for her family.
The programs were enacted at the height of the pandemic, in the wake of skyrocketing unemployment, mass layoffs, and widespread business closures. In New Jersey, more than 2.2 million people filed for unemployment benefits, peaking at 200,000 workers filing weekly claims in April 2020.
Sixteen months later, New Jersey is tied for the fifth highest unemployment rate in the nation at 7.3%. The state has recovered roughly 60% of jobs lost since March 2020.
President Joe Biden urged states with high unemployment rates to use federal funds, like American Rescue Plan dollars, to continue paying out additional unemployment benefits. At a coronavirus press briefing last week, Gov. Phil Murphy declined to say if New Jersey would do so. The state received more than $6 billion from that pot of money in May.
A state Department of Labor spokeswoman said the agency is “waiting for forthcoming guidance” from Washington, D.C. The department did not respond to multiple requests for further comment.
Since the start of the pandemic, the state Labor Department has doled out more than $33 billion in state and federal benefits. The unemployment trust fund is already depleted.
“It’s a train wreck we can see coming,” said Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow with progressive think tank The Century Foundation. “What will happen to these folks? Some will find jobs, but I think millions won’t and will suffer the kind of consequences we’ve seen historically during an economic downturn.”
Assemblyman Hal Wirths (R-Sussex), who was state labor commissioner during the Great Recession, recalled extending unemployment benefits when unemployment hit 10% in 2009.
Wirths said he sympathizes with people who can’t rejoin the workforce due to health or child care reasons, but he doesn’t support extending benefits.
“For the critics, it’s tough to explain that we have the most amount of jobs open in history, and at the same time we keep paying out extended benefits,” he said. “There’s no question it was needed when Covid was severe, but it’s a bad idea to continue it.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 10.1 million job openings on the last business day in June.
The impact of losing benefits on New Jerseyans
A former senior lead at Santander Bank, Giselle Manzano was used to bringing in a six-figure salary for years. When pandemic restrictions set in, Manzano’s schedule was cut to three days a week, and the company took away all bonuses, overtime, and commissions.
On March 21, 2021, she was laid off and filed for unemployment benefits. When federal programs lift, she’ll still have state benefits through the winter, but will lose the supplemental $300.
“I went from six figures to $731 a week. Now I’m paying $1,003 a month for health benefits, I stopped paying my life insurance, I’ve emptied out my savings, both my retirement accounts, it’s all gone,” Manzano said. “I’m cutting coupons. It’s just something I’ve never had to do before in my life.”
She’s applied to hundreds of corporate jobs, she said, but since she lives with her two elderly parents, she said she can’t take a risky job in retail or at a supermarket. But if Mazano finds that just state benefits won’t hold her over, she might have to reassess that risk.
“As a second-generation immigrant, we’ve always been taught no matter what, we work, and I want to work. But it’s not ending. Now with the Delta variant, we’re not close to this being over,” she said.
She added: “What am I going to do if I bring the virus back to my parents?”
Stephanie Freed, the executive director of ExtendPUA, a national grassroots organization focused on lobbying federal officials to extend unemployment benefits, said millions of people like Manzano are left to weigh those options: go broke, or bring a potentially deadly virus home.
“There’s a lot of panic happening, a lot of desperation, and a lot of frustration and rage. People feel like they’re being betrayed,” Freed said.
ExtendPUA helped push for an extension for benefits in July 2020, and met with senators in the fall when those benefits were set to expire in December. This time, she said, there appears to be no urgency to extend pandemic-era programs.
The organization created an online resource to offer food pantry location and rental assistance, but Freed stressed mutual aid is not enough to save everyone. She’s optimistic Murphy might look at approving additional benefits in light of the November election, when he is on the ballot seeking a second term.
“I genuinely don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s terrifying, cruel and disappointing to see,” she said. “We need to see more leadership from legislators on every level.”
“It’s not like these benefits will go away and people will magically go back to work. When you survey people and ask why they’re not looking for work, there’s so many reasons besides unemployment.”
– Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The Century Foundation
Jackson said losing weekly benefits will be very hard on her. She said she lies awake at night trying to figure out how to balance losing her income with having no one to help her watch her kids.
“Three kids alone is a lot. Then there’s rent, the phone bill, school shopping. I do have money saved up in case of an emergency, because I’m a mom, but once that’s gone, I have nothing,” she said. “I’m still trying to make ends meet.”
The jobs she’s applied to either want her to work overnight, or require a schedule that doesn’t work because she has no child care, she said. Other jobs require a car, since public transportation is unreliable. Most places she applies to never call her back.
And even if she did find a job, a potential outbreak at school could force her and her children into a two-week quarantine, something she can’t afford to do.
Jackson took advantage of some free time during the pandemic to study for her driving permit, in hopes of buying a car. Maybe she’ll drive for Uber or Lyft, she said, which would save her the $18 roundtrip to take her kids to school since there’s no bus to drop them off.
“If I could do that, and I can save up money for my car, then the situation wouldn’t be where it’s at right now,” she said.
Debating how to spend federal funds
State Senator Loretta Weinberg said there hasn’t been much chatter among state lawmakers on using ARP money to extend unemployment. Weinberg (D-Bergen) said she’d be open to it, but would need a briefing from the Labor Department on pros and cons.
“How many people will lose benefits? Do we have job openings for all these people? Do we have child care in place for working parents? There’s a number of questions that haven’t been answered adequately,” she said.
Stettner, the Century Foundation economist, noted while there are millions of jobs open, many people aren’t returning to work for various reasons. People are rethinking their career paths, weighing the danger of in-person jobs, or worried it’s still too unsafe to return to work, he said.
“It’s not like these benefits will go away and people will magically go back to work,” he said. “When you survey people and ask why they’re not looking for work, there’s so many reasons besides unemployment. It’s also time for employers to think long and hard.”
State Sen. Declan O’Scanlon said he’s heard from plenty of business owners who all report dealing with a labor shortage over the summer. O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth) pointed to a Cape May restaurant that had to close on a busy night because the manager had no servers.
“This isn’t me trying to be cold and hard, this is me caring about our overall economy,” he said. “We need to keep businesses in business, make sure people are getting to the jobs they need, and the time to do that is now.”
Lifting benefits won’t solve the so-called labor shortage overnight, he said, but he expects it to quickly “make a big dent.”
He also noted he’d rather use the ARP money to replenish the depleted Unemployment Trust Fund, instead of the route that Murphy decided to go. The Democratic governor signed a law in January raising the money through a three-year tax hike on businesses, starting with an estimated $250 million increase in October.
Wirths is sponsoring a bill, A5828, in the Assembly that would allocate $2 billion to the trust fund.
“It’s a no-brainer to me,” Wirths said. “We have $6 billion, there’s no need for a $250 million tax increase and many more to come. And I’m not going to advocate for extending federal benefits — I’ve never seen so many help wanted signs in my life.”
Weeks away from losing her benefits and with few choices at her fingertips, Manzano has been pleading to lawmakers to rethink letting the extra benefits expire.
“Please look at me. You don’t want to generalize and put them all in the same pool and say they’re all unemployed by choice. I’m breaking down like this, so we need this important change,” she said.
Governor Phil Murphy at Cinelease Studios Caven Point Jersey City
Governor Phil Murphy cut the proverbial ribbon today on Cinelease Studios at Caven Point in Jersey City. It is the largest film studio in New Jersey and the first purpose-built facility of its kind in the state.
Flanked by Cinelease General Manager Gannon Murphy, Secretary of State Tahesha Way, Assemblyman Raj Mukherji and Jersey City Municipal Council President Joyce Watterman, the governor was effusive in his praise for the project.
“In the early part of the 1900s New Jersey was the home of America’s nascent movie complex. Movie studios dotted the landscape all along the Hudson. Some of the major studios … have their roots in Jersey soil, among them Fox, MGM and Universal.”
“We always knew we had the most important thing: location, location, location. I would challenge anyone to find a state that puts every possible setting and backdrop, from urban streets to small town greens, from the Jersey shore to green forests, within such a close geographic range.”
Cinelease is in the business of providing lighting, equipment, power distribution, and sound stages to small- and large-scale film productions.
Cinelease Studios Caven Point Jersey City
The new studio features 70,000 square feet of stage space along with workshop and flex space. The ceilings are 40 feet high, and there are no columns in the sound stages. Cinelease anticipates booking two to four major television and film productions a year, putting 200 to 400 film crew technicians to work, and supporting ancillary businesses such as catering, lumber, waste removal, equipment rentals, janitorial, security, and others.
With the reinstatement of the film and television tax credit and its subsequent expansion last year, New Jersey is hoping to grow in status as a shooting location. According to the administration, in 2019, film and television productions in the state resulted in more than $420 million in economic activity.
The tax credit, revived by Murphy after it was allowed to lapse under former Governor Chris Christie, has been criticized by both Republicans and good-government groups as lacking sufficient oversight and diverting money from pressing needs like infrastructure.
Nevertheless, with productions on several new movies, television series, and commercials, the governor believes that the state is on track to surpass the 2019 number. Indeed, New Jersey is providing the backdrop for “The Equalizer,” “Ways and Means,” and “FBI: Most Wanted” from CBS, along with Hulu’s “Wutang: An American Saga” and Peacock Network’s “Dr. Death.” And over the last few years, film productions have included “The Joker,” “West Side Story” and “The Plot Against America.”
The COVID-19 pandemic led an unprecedented number of consumers to switch to online shopping for their grocery needs. With that comes a range of new difficulties, including finding nutrition labels, and the struggle is only compounded for those with special dietary needs.
Enter the group behind Berry, a new Jersey City-based student startup that wants to help ease the pains of the online grocery shopper, while promoting community health and wellness. The Berry team consists of Eleni Retzepis, Anjali Kapoor, Franchesca Doell, Liam Esparraguera, and Jersey City-native Anna Prilutsky. All five are rising sophomores at Princeton University, studying a mix of engineering, computer science, and economics.
Inspired by their own personal and familial struggles with nutrition-dependent health conditions, they decided to start a company to fill a need that they were able to identify.
“The four girls, we all started living together in the fall, because of the pandemic,” recounts Anna Prilutsky. “Our school was virtual, so we lived together in Jersey City and we did ShopRite online grocery delivery… Our pantry was stacked with, like, four different types of peanut butter, because everyone had their own different needs… And it made the process of shopping online very interesting because everyone wanted access to different nutritional information. And so over time this idea formed of like, hey, most of us study computer science, we have the skills to do something about this. Let’s develop a tool that helps people that care about nutrition when they’re shopping online.”
From left to right: Liam Esparraguera, Franchesca Doell, Anna Prilutsky
Franchesca Doell was inspired by her own family. “I’ve always tried to eat healthy, but my main motivation was because of my dad,” she says. “My dad has LADA Type 1 Diabetes… [and he struggles] a lot with grocery shopping because he has to look at every single nutritional label there is out there… in order to make sure he’s not eating too [many] carbohydrates, so his blood sugars don’t fluctuate as much. And so I realized that there was a need for something out there that would help [with] this nutritional analysis, so he would waste less of his time… He’s a company owner, and so his time is very valuable, as it is with many people with diabetes and autoimmune diseases.”
The team members applied to Princeton’s Keller Center eLab Summer Accelerator program, and were accepted. Now, they’re spending the summer living in Jersey City and working with Princeton staff to research and develop their product. Currently, their goal is to interview as many members of the Jersey City community as possible in order to best understand their needs.
In an email, Prilutsky explained, “Online shopping is difficult, especially for people who have to take the time to examine what they buy (diabetics, dieters, etc). Nutrition labels are not easily accessible and understandable. From our 50+ interviews done so far, we’ve found that across most demographics shoppers feel that the barriers to healthy eating are a lack of knowledge and time. If people knew which bad ingredients to look for, they would factor this into their shopping. From our general research we’ve found that this issue is expansive and applies to a community like JC where online shopping is popular, but healthy eating is often inaccessible due to a lack of digestible information.”
The tool that the Berry team is creating is still in the early development stages of being an extension for online shopping platforms, and the ultimate product will be influenced by what they learn from their interviews. The launch will likely be focused specifically on customers in Jersey City, with the long-term goal of expanding further.
Locals who are interested in being interviewed as part of Berry’s research can visit berryhealthy.co to sign up.
Top photo, from left to right: Anna Prilutsky, Eleni Retzepis, Franchesca Doell, and Anjali Kapoor.
As if the current climate during the Covid-19 pandemic isn’t distressing enough, being overcharged for essentials adds a distinct insult to injury for Jersey City residents. In a few local stores, items like isopropyl alcohol, hand sanitizer and disinfectant cleaners are suddenly three to four times their usual price, as reported by consumers in the area. This is a practice widely considered to be unethical and exploitative.
Sergeant David Calton checking prices on Lysol, photo by Jayne Freeman
Price gouging isn’t new in times of crisis — merchants have been doing it for ages. But it is against the law. In light of this, and in response to numerous reports of the activity received over the past few days, Jersey City is dispensing its new Quality of Life Task Force (a division of the police department) to log consumers’ citings and contact any local businesses that may be overcharging for items such as isopropyl alcohol, sanitizer, and spray cleaners for which the demand may be higher than the supply. Based on over a dozen calls recently made to the mayor’s office and the police department, the task force has been making the rounds all over the city and issuing summonses when called for.
Today in the Heights, special agents strolled into various 99-cent-style shops inquiring about items that were said to be far above their normal retail price. For example, a regular size (16 oz.) bottle of rubbing alcohol costs $2.50 – $2.99 at most drugstores, but at many dollar stores around Jersey City such items were priced at $5.99 – $8.99. Store managers and clerks explained that this wasn’t necessarily their fault as suppliers had raised their prices of these items, forcing them (the stores) to hike retail prices proportionally in order to maintain their profit margins. But the current state statute prohibits retailers from increasing their own (retail) prices more than 10% compared to what products cost consumers immediately prior to a formal state of emergency.
Today’s inspections weren’t as dramatic as the one carried out at a dollar store on Newark Avenue yesterday. In that case, nine summonses were issued with a total potential fine of $90,000 ($10,000 for each summons.) Chief Jersey City Prosecutor Jake Hudnut, who headed up both days’ inspections, explained the difference: “We went to four stores today. None had prices as high as yesterday. Many had increased [prices] but also [had] documentation that their suppliers raised costs. That was absent yesterday. So we informed them that they could only go above 10% above the supplier’s increased costs. All the stores promised to change their prices. We will follow up. One store in Journal Square even changed their price board right in front of the officers.”
Photo by Jayne Freeman
At the very least, store owners and managers are getting the message and will certainly be taken to task by the agents assigned to protect our community from illegal and unethical activity.
If you suspect price gouging in your neighborhood, please report the matter to the Jersey City Police Department at 201-547-5477 or to the NJ Consumer Affairs Department at 800-242-5846.
Header: Quality of Life Task Force, photo by Jayne Freeman
