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A building at 2 Stratford Place, one of four condemned by Newark officials in November of last year. (Dan Ivers | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

SOUTH ORANGE -- Most tenants living without heat or hot water, with mold or rodent infestations, or in other substandard conditions are overwhelmingly unaware of their legal rights.

That's one of the conclusions of a Seton Hall University School of Law study, "The Implied Warranty of Habitatability Lives: Making Real the Promise of Landlord/Tenant Reform," which will be published this month in the "Rutgers Law Review."

In the study's examination of the 40,000 residential eviction proceedings carried out in Essex County in 2014, only 80 of the tenants used what is called the "implied warranty of habitatability" defense, which allows for tenants to legally withhold rent if they are subjected to substandard living conditions.

The 0.002% statistic is "startling," the study concludes, given the "far greater statistical likelihood that significant housing code violations exist on leased premises in Essex County."

According to Paula Franzese, the Seton Hall law professor who co-authored the report with Abbot Gorin, a staff attorney with Essex-Newark Legal Services and Seton Hall law student David Guzik, there is no precise way to know exactly how many people in and around Newark are living in substandard conditions. But that, she said, is part of the problem that the study seeks to solve.

"Our difficulty (in finding information about the rental housing stock) is a testament to the lack of...access to hard and fast data," Franzese said.

The study calls for several changes, including the creation of a database to track the affordable housing stock and landlord violations. The study also calls for new policies that would cut violating landlords off from continuing to receive governmental rent subsidies, and put an end to "blacklisting" clients who have been late on rent payments in the past.

Paula Franzese. (Courtesy Seton Hall)

Lawyers should also become more involved in representing low-income tenants, according to the study.

In landlord-tenant cases, about 99 percent of landlords are represented by lawyers, according to Franzese. But, only 1 percent of tenants are, she said.

"This (study) began with the desire to give a voice to the many tenants...(who have) the system stacked against them," the professor said.

The authors plan to proposition both the city of Newark and New Jersey lawmakers to make the changes proposed in the document, Franzese said.

Though city officials were not immediately available to comment, Mayor Ras Baraka has conducted several high profile crackdowns of "slum" apartments throughout his administration, condemning landlords who provide substandard living conditions to their tenants.

"It's a new day and (we) aren't going to tolerate this stuff," Baraka said last year during one of the raids.

Jessica Mazzola may be reached at

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