Page 24 - RE-NJ Nov.2021 #59

22 NOVEMBER 2021
Sheila Oliver
COMING TOGETHER
Builders, public officials look to confront New Jersey’s housing supply and affordability crisis
For any developer seeking a joint venture partner in New Jersey, Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver pointed to the
dozens of public housing agencies in cities and towns across the state.
Many are open for business, she said, and eager to change the perception of what they can do.
“Public housing authorities in this state have too far been overlooked as potential partners in the building
it, you think that it’s a condominium community.”
To Oliver, who also leads the state Department of Community Affairs, it’s one of many ways in which the public and private sectors can join forces to increase housing production in New Jersey. That was likely a welcome message to attendees at last month’s Atlantic Builders Convention in Atlantic City, where she and other officials joined homebuilders to confront the state’s housing supply and affordability crisis, pledging a spirit of cooperation as they search for solutions.
According to the panelists, that can mean everything from updated zoning and parking regulations to expanded subsidies for development and first- time homebuyers.
Tantum Real Estate and builder
vice president of the New Jersey Builders Association. “This is not a conversation about affordable housing. This is a conversation about housing affordability, and the more housing that is built, the more affordable it is for everybody.”
Experts point to the last two decades as proof. Rutgers
University
economist Morris
Davis said the
supply of rental
units in New
Jersey grew by
14 percent from
2000 to 2019, well
below the mark
of 24 percent in the rest of the U.S. during that time. That has translated
to higher rents in New Jersey for every income level, he said, noting that apartment dwellers earning $50,000 or less pay an average of 22 percent more in rent in New Jersey than in the rest of the country.
He added that, at every income level, New Jersey renters spend a higher fraction of their wages on housing than
academic director of the Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School. “The affordability problem is bad everywhere in the United States, but because rents are higher in New Jersey than everywhere else, the affordability problem — especially for lower-income households — is especially troubling in New Jersey.”
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka called housing “one of the most important issues in the state right now,” noting that his city has a shortage of 16,000 affordably priced units. Other communities around New Jersey
are also “grappling with the fact that they have to build affordable housing in their own communities and what that is going to look like,” he said, but development costs have only risen alongside the price of materials, labor and land, among other factors.
Baraka added that Newark is attempting to
By Joshua Burd
of affordable housing,” Oliver said. “It depends on what housing authority it
is around the state, but there are housing authorities that have the ability to
Morris Davis
do new building — not the traditional kind of public housing that people are accustomed to think about when you say ‘public housing authority.’
“In Trenton, the Trenton Housing Authority developed a beautiful complex,” she added, referring to a new 77-unit property in the northern end of the city. “And when you visit
“Everything you’re hearing up here is about the need to deliver volume, the
need to deliver product,” said Debra Tantleff, founding principal of
Debra Tantleff
help by defraying land costs. To that end, nearly 30 percent of properties or buildings in the city are under some form of subsidy.
Homebuilders joined key public officials at the Atlantic Builders Convention, held from Oct. 11 to 13 in Atlantic City, to confront New Jersey’s housing supply and affordability crisis, pledging a spirit of cooperation as they search for solutions.
“We have a huge crisis in Newark and we have a huge crisis in the state of New Jersey, so what we’ve been trying to do is build as much as we can,” he said. Since 2019, the city has allowed for the construction of more than 5,000 units, roughly half of which have been priced for lower-income residents.
Piecing together local and state subsidies has been central to that production and helping to lower the cost of building, Baraka said. And the city is now looking to do the same using federal funds, having set aside about $20 million from this year’s American Rescue Plan Act for developers to build units for families earning 30 percent of the city’s area median income.
those in other states. That includes those earning less than $30,000 annually, who spend 50 percent or more of their pay on rent in the Garden State.
Davis said it debunks the notion that renting is
more expensive in New Jersey simply because incomes are higher, he said, while showing similar data for homeownership.
“These are alarming numbers,” said Davis, the Paul V. Profeta chair of real estate and the
Ras Baraka