Renting a pre-1978 unit in NJ: your lead-safety rights
August 27, 2026If your building was built before 1978, your landlord is required to have it inspected and to hold a lead-safe certificate (or a permanent lead-free one). You have the right to ask for a copy, and deteriorated paint is exactly what the law exists to catch.
How to check your unit
Start with your lease. At the beginning of a tenancy the landlord has to give you evidence of a valid lead-safe certificate and attach a copy to the lease as an exhibit (N.J.A.C. 5:28A-3.1). If nothing is attached, that is the first question to ask, in writing.
Peeling paint: the escalation path
First, report it to your landlord in writing (email counts) and keep a copy. Most owners fix it; paint stabilization is cheap compared to what follows. If nothing happens in a reasonable time, report the condition to your municipal housing office. Deteriorated paint in a pre-1978 rental with a child under six in the household is treated seriously; testing your child’s blood lead level is free through your pediatrician or the local health department.
The order of those two steps matters. New Jersey’s reprisal law (N.J.S.A. 2A:42-10.10 to 10.14) bars a landlord from serving a notice to quit or moving to evict you as a reprisal for a good-faith complaint to a government authority about a health or safety code violation, and it assumes you raised the problem with the owner first and allowed a reasonable time to fix it. Do that in writing and keep the copy: it is both the polite route and the one that keeps the protection intact. A landlord who retaliates anyway can be sued for damages and injunctive relief. For free legal help, see Legal Services of New Jersey; for the state program, see NJ DCA.
Where to report it, town by town
Certificates are filed with the municipality, so the town is both the place that can check whether your address has one and the only party that can make the owner act. Contacts below are the offices we confirmed; where a town has its own lead ordinance, the section number is worth quoting in your complaint, because it moves the conversation from opinion to code.
| Town | Who to contact | What to mention |
|---|---|---|
| Hoboken | Municipal Clerk or the Municipal Inspector | Every certificate is filed with both offices (Ch. 125, § 125-18A), so the Clerk can tell you whether one exists for your address. |
| Jersey City | Division of Housing Preservation, Three Jackson Square (342 Martin Luther King Drive), Mon-Fri 8:30am-4:30pm | Owners must register each covered property with that division and update it within 20 days after a turnover (§ 254-81.1), so your address should be in the registry. |
| Union City | City housing office | The city inspects with its own employee (Ch. 273). If abatement forces you out, § 273-2 makes the owner pay your relocation. |
| Bayonne | City housing office | The city retains the inspection contractor itself (Ch. 17, Art. V). |
| North Bergen | Bureau of Housing Inspectors, 1116 43rd St, 2nd floor, (201) 392-2527 or (201) 392-2528, Mon-Fri 9am-4pm | No local lead chapter; the township works to the state rules and has a lead inspector on staff. |
| West New York | Building Department (Building, Zoning, Code Enforcement, Housing), (201) 295-5170 | No local lead chapter; the state rules apply. |
| Kearny | Town code enforcement | Local rules in § 15-5. |
| Guttenberg | Borough code enforcement | Local rules in § 13-13. |
| Harrison | (973) 268-2425 | The town runs a program through an appointed firm. |
| Weehawken, Secaucus, East Newark | Municipal code enforcement | No lead chapter in the local code, so the state rules are what applies. |
After a town issues a notice of violation the owner gets 30 days to fix it, and fines then accrue at up to $1,000 per week. One more lever worth knowing: an existing certificate can be voided if an independent inspection finds a lead hazard (N.J.A.C. 5:28A-2.4).
Tenant questions
Rent withholding in NJ has strict procedural rules and real risk. Get advice from LSNJ or a tenant lawyer before trying it.
Ask which exemption and for the document behind it. In New Jersey the list in N.J.A.C. 5:28A-1.3(b) is exhaustive and narrow: construction after 1978, a lead-free certificate based on XRF testing, and a few similar cases. A building from 1985 is genuinely exempt; a renovated pre-1978 building is not.
No, and the distinction matters. A New Jersey lead-safe certificate means no deteriorated paint hazards were visible on the day of inspection; intact paint in a pre-1978 building is usually still lead paint underneath. Only a lead-free certificate, based on an XRF reading of every painted surface, means the lead is absent. Report new peeling to your landlord in writing.