Published: March 11, 2013
By Erin O'Neill

Ever since Hurricane Sandy forced Darren O’Neill from his apartment in Seaside Heights, he has bounced from one friend’s house to another while looking for a new place in town to live.

The 31-year-old O’Neill said some properties are "slowly getting ready, but they’re not for the [year-round] renters."

"They’re for summer renters," he said, which cost $2,000 to $3,000 per month.

For now, O’Neill, a retail employee on the boardwalk, pays $600 a month plus utilities to rent a room in a friend’s house in Brick.

O’Neill is among the tens of thousands of storm victims at the Shore facing a new reality in a state where tenants already pay the fourth-highest rents in the nation, according to a report released today.

The 2013 Out of Reach report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey found the fair market rental rate — without spending more than 30 percent of a person’s income on housing — is $1,292-a-month statewide for a two-bedroom apartment, including utilities.

Rents are higher in just Hawaii, New York and California by that measure.

The high cost of renting isn’t a new issue for the state, but social service officials said the problem was made worse — particularly for low-income residents — by the effect of a natural disaster that depleted supply as demand skyrocketed.

"It was difficult before" to find affordable rental housing, said Joyce Campbell, associate executive director of Catholic Charities, Diocese of Trenton. "Now, it’s virtually impossible."

In Monmouth County, about 24 percent of households rent properties rather than own them. But about 64 percent of those residents cannot afford the fair market rent of $1,410, the report found.

About 18 percent of households in Ocean County rent, and some 67 percent of those residents cannot afford the fair market rate of $1,019, according to the report.

"It’s nonexistent, the rentals around here," said Christie Winters, program coordinator for the Visitation Relief Center in Brick. "And if there are rental properties around, the rent is too high. It’s just too high. There’s a lot of summer homes around here. They’re used to renting the homes out for anywhere between $2,000 to $2,500."

Winters said that although there are programs available to help residents pay for the initial costs of a rental property, low-income residents are "not going to be able to sustain it long term."

"That’s a big, big problem that we’re facing right now," she said. "There’s funding to get them in there. There’s funding to help them survive for the next four or five months but then after that" residents could not afford to live there permanently.

A report released last week by Enterprise Community Partners found of the more than 250,000 New Jersey residents who registered for assistance through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 43 percent were renters. More than two-thirds of those tenants earned less than $30,000 a year, according to the report.

"The need is great" for affordable rental housing, Arnold Cohen, policy coordinator for the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, said. "It is even greater post-Sandy."