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dui lawyer
Plaintiff never selected Jennings as a tenant; he only allowed her to occupy the apartment that he rented to her mother. After Guy's death ended her tenancy and Jennings sought to enter into her own tenancy, plaintiff had the right to evaluate Jennings' creditworthiness and fitness as a tenant in the same way as any other prospective tenant. See Franklin Tower One, supra, 157 N.J. at 611. Therefore, upon Guy's death and the expiration of her month-to-month tenancy, Jennings had no automatic right under the federal law and regulations governing the Section 8 housing choice voucher program to continue her occupancy of the apartment.
The NJ Anti-Eviction Act provides in pertinent part: No lessee or tenant or the assigns, under-tenants or legal representatives of such lessee or tenant may be removed by the Superior Court from any house, building, mobile home or land in a mobile home park or tenement leased for residential purposes, ··?except upon establishment of one of the following grounds as good cause:····[ N.J.S.A. 2A:18-61.1.]
The Appellate Division has previously observed that “[t]he effect of [the Anti-Eviction] Act is to create a perpetual tenancy, virtually a life interest, in favor of a tenant of residential premises covered by the Act as to whom there is no statutory cause for eviction.?Ctr. Ave. Realty, supra, 264 N.J.Super. at 350. It is undisputed that Guy was entitled to the protections of the Anti-Eviction Act during her lifetime. Jennings contends that she also is entitled to the protections of the Act as “the assign[ ], under-tenant[ ] or legal representative[ ]?of Guy. N.J.S.A. 2A:18-61.1. The Appellate Division has addressed similar contentions on a number of prior occasions. In Ctr. Ave.. Realty, supra, a tenant died intestate, and her son, who was her executor, heir, an occupant listed on the original lease, and an occupant for the two years prior to his mother's death, sought to succeed to his mother's tenancy by virtue of any of these capacities. In an opinion by Judge Pressler, the court rejected the son's argument that he was entitled to the protections of the Anti-Eviction Act in his capacity as executor or heir of his mother's estate:
[T]he Anti-Eviction Act, by its terms, applies not only to the tenant, but also to the tenant's legal representatives. N.J.S.A. 2A:18-61.1. If this provision were construed literally, as defendant would have us do, the legal representative would apparently succeed to his decedent's perpetual term and, in effect, the tenancy could actually continue indefinitely down through all the generations succeeding the original tenant. We doubt that this conversion of the present virtual life interest of the tenant into a virtual fee simple was intended by the Anti-Eviction Act, and we decline to so construe it. Because the son had vacated the apartment before the appeal was heard, and the only remaining issues related to damages, we concluded that there was no need to “address [the son's] contention that he [was] entitled to succeed to his mother's tenancy as an occupant or tenant in his own right.?Id. at 352. We also observed: Because of the problematic overlay of the Anti-Eviction Act on common law landlord-tenancy principles, it may be that statutory solutions advancing the legislative purposes of the Act would be appropriate, but that, of course, is a matter for the Legislature. [ Ibid.]
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