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people stay out of more expensive
services like hospitals and emergency
departments.”
Diskint said the offi cial Medicaid
waitlist contains about 8,000 people
with intellectual and developmental
disabilities looking for housing, but
he thinks the actual number is higher.
That makes it all the more important
to expand supportive housing in
New Jersey, he said, noting that such
projects can garner support from
communities.
“It doesn’t come with that perception
that you’d be bringing in a new popu-
lation,” Diskint said. “You’re just giving
existing neighbors a better opportu-
nity to live independently. Disability
affects all populations equally.”
Christiana Foglio, founder and CEO
of Community Investment Strategies,
said towns might have hesitated to
add supportive housing in the past
due to NIMBYism or a “not in my
backyard” pushback. But incentivizing
municipalities means “you get
everybody on the same page.”
She thinks that including supportive
units, as her Lawrenceville-based fi rm
does in all of its affordable housing
projects, helps get the developments
approved, she said. She added that,
when CIS incorporates special needs
housing, it knows in advance which
homes it will build to accessible
specifi cations. For residents with
mental health issues, the developer
pays a nonprofi t to provide support
services and check-ins.
State funding has been a major factor
in increasing supportive housing, said
Melanie Walter,
executive
director of the
New Jersey
Housing and
Mortgage
Finance Agency.
The Special
Needs Housing
Melanie Walter
Trust Fund has
long provided loans to developers and
governments to create the projects,
but the funding was mostly gone by
2018, slowing development. In 2021,
the state Legislature recapitalized the
fund at $20 million a year.
Walter said, now that the funding
is assured, it’s getting built into
developers’ plans.
“Since 2021, we saw a 28 percent
increase in supportive housing beds
and individuals assisted in each of
the fi rst two years, and then in 2023,
it went up even more — 84 percent,”
she said. “And that was because
(with) a lot of the federal programs,
we required that there be at least fi ve
special needs apartments vouchered
in each new building that was built.”
Between 2010 and 2020, there were
120 to 300 new supportive units
produced a year in New Jersey, but
now Walter expects that number to
jump to 580 to 600.
Still, advocates and developers
grapple with another challenge.
Foglio notes that supportive housing
residents might only have $400 or
$500 to spend on rent.
“I think the saddest part is when we
build the special needs units … that
they go unused because you can’t fi nd
people that can afford to live there,”
she said.
While the State Rental Assistance
Program does assist disabled
households, Foglio doesn’t expect
much federal
help. State
and other
organizations
need to
determine “how
do we really
wrap around
people of need
Christiana Foglio
at this level,
special needs in particular, to try to
fi gure out how we actually get them
in units that now we can build.”
Especially with the impact that the
projects have demonstrated in the
past.
“We see phenomenal outcomes,”
Walter said. “We see very low eviction
rates. We see a lot of improvements
in terms of care and medication
compliance and physical and
occupational therapy … When we take
that holistic approach and you have
the landlords responsible for providing
social services and the town’s invested
in that resource, we’re really helping
a lot of individuals who would have
struggled in a lot of housing markets
around the country.” RE
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