After the Fire, a Local Law Made Sure No Family Was Left Without a Home
After a fire at Woodbridge Center Plaza displaced 50 residents in April, a unique township ordinance required their landlord to rehouse them at the same rent by the end of the day.
Fire hoses stream water onto Building 23 at Woodbridge Center Plaza as flames engulf the upper floor and roof of the three-story apartment building, April 17, 2026.
Chris Howell | April 29, 2026
Just before dawn on April 17, a fire tore through Building 23 at Woodbridge Center Plaza on Plaza Drive, destroying most of a three-story apartment building and leaving 15 families with little more than what they’d worn to bed. Among them was a one-month-old infant. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
By that evening, every family had a place to sleep. Not because of the Red Cross, and not purely because their landlord chose to do the right thing. But because a Woodbridge Township ordinance required it.
Under the law, when tenants are displaced through no fault of their own, their landlord must offer them a vacant unit — first within the same complex, then at any other property the landlord owns in the township, and if necessary, at properties outside of town — at the same rent they had been paying. Best Rent NJ, the owners and operators of Woodbridge Center Plaza, complied. According to the mayor’s office, the company secured housing for all displaced families within hours of the fire.
“If you’re the landlord, you’re responsible for finding them another unit in your complex first, if there are any, and then in any other complex you own in town,” Mayor John McCormac told the Municipal Council during the first public session since the fire. “They immediately got everybody a place to stay.”
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What makes that outcome notable is how rare the legal framework behind it is. Under New Jersey’s default casualty statute, a landlord’s obligations move in the opposite direction. When a building is destroyed by fire without the tenant’s fault, state law says the lease terminates, and the landlord’s duties end. No New Jersey state law, and no federal regulation, requires a private landlord to provide replacement housing to displaced tenants. A review of municipal codes across the region found no comparable ordinance in any other New Jersey municipality, nor in New York, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut.
Other jurisdictions have enacted protections, but they work differently. New York City requires the municipality to relocate tenants and then charges costs back to the landlord only if negligence is proven. Jersey City operates a capped relocation assistance program — up to seven days of temporary housing depending on income — that the city funds and sometimes recovers from the landlord. Connecticut requires municipalities to provide immediate aid and then bill the landlord. In each of these models, the city or state is the intermediary. Woodbridge’s ordinance is distinct: it requires the landlord to immediately source replacement housing from their own properties, with the city’s rental licensing process as the enforcement lever.
In most New Jersey communities, families in the same situation would have faced a familiar but uncertain path: a few nights of Red Cross hotel placement, help replacing lost documents, a returned security deposit, and then they’re on their own. FEMA assistance requires a federal disaster declaration, which a single apartment fire does not trigger. Renters’ insurance, if tenants carry it, can cover temporary housing costs.
Woodbridge’s ordinance enforces the rehousing requirement through the township’s rental licensing process. A landlord cannot rent any vacant unit in Woodbridge to a new tenant without first certifying to the township that no displaced tenant from their portfolio remains unhoused.
Flames tear through the roof of Building 23 at Woodbridge Center Plaza in the early morning hours of April 17, 2026, displacing 15 families. Eight of Woodbridge’s nine fire districts responded. (Woodbridge Fire Department / Facebook)
The practical effect is that Best Rent NJ’s ability to do business in Woodbridge was contingent on making these families whole, not as an act of goodwill, but rather as a condition of operating.
John R. Hagerty, Director of Communications for Mayor McCormac’s office, confirmed the ordinance’s details and said the township has had to invoke it only rarely. In every case where it has been triggered, Hagerty said, landlords have fulfilled their obligations without issue.
The response on the morning of the fire drew wide praise. Police, who arrived before fire companies, went door-to-door banging on doors and, where needed, kicking them in to clear the building. A neighbor in the complex had already started the work, throwing pebbles at windows and banging on walls to rouse residents who weren’t answering their doorbells. Eight of Woodbridge’s nine fire districts ultimately responded, along with mutual aid companies from Fords, Avenel, Port Reading, Iselin, Colonia, and Hopelawn. Not a single injury was reported.
“It was an absolute miracle that nobody died in that fire,” McCormac said. “Those people. All they have left are the clothes they were wearing to bed.”
Council President Sharon McAuliffe opened the meeting with a moment of silence for the displaced families. For many of them, the immediate crisis of shelter has been resolved. The longer work of replacing the lost documents, belongings, clothing, and a sense of stability continues.
Resident Maria DeGrusso, who organized a community donation drive in the days after the fire, distributed clothing, toiletries, and hot meals at the Woodbridge American Legion. Donations are still being accepted at the complex’s management office. The township’s Woodbridge Community Charity Fund is also accepting monetary donations and gift cards redeemable at grocery and retail stores. Checks should be made payable to the Woodbridge Community Charity Fund and can be dropped off at the Mayor’s Office, third floor, Woodbridge Municipal Building, One Main Street, Woodbridge, NJ 07095. For more information, contact the Mayor’s Office at 732-602-6015 or [email protected].
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