By Joshua Burd
With the release of new calculations on the state’s affordable housing deficit, towns and cities in New Jersey now have just over three months to adopt the numbers or provide their own.
The Jan. 31 deadline is among several key dates for local governments after the state Department of Community Affairs on Friday issued guidance for how many low- and moderate-income units that each municipality must allow in the coming years. Those obligations, which are nonbinding, total more than 150,000 homes across New Jersey’s 564 municipalities, including a deficit of 65,410 existing dwellings that need to be rehabilitated and another 84,698 that need to be built through 2035.
Governing bodies that come up with their own calculations are subject to challenges from developers, affordable housing advocates and other stakeholders through the end of February. Ultimately, though, towns and cities have until June 30 to adopt specific zoning and other plans to address the deficit outlined by DCA.
Click here to view each municipality’s total and the state’s methodology.
“This is an opportunity for municipalities to prioritize sensible and equitable growth, redevelopment and infrastructure investments that will benefit their communities for generations to come,” said Adam Gordon, executive director of the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Center. “We appreciate that DCA produced these calculations on schedule, which we’ll be closely analyzing in the following days and weeks.”
The release comes under a law that Gov. Phil Murphy signed in late March, aiming to streamline the tangled, at times polarizing process of building affordable housing under the state Supreme Court’s seminal Mount Laurel cases and the ensuing Fair Housing Act. And it follows a decade in which the state judiciary oversaw enforcement — having assumed control in 2015 from the dormant Council on Affordable Housing — leading to the creation of some 21,000 deed-restricted affordable homes in New Jersey.
The new law abolished COAH while effectively codifying the methodology adopted by state courts — namely, Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson, who oversaw a high-profile case in Mercer County in 2018 — allowing DCA to establish guidance for each municipality. The legislation has also created a new dispute resolution program managed by the state judiciary, which would come into play in the case of conflicts among towns, developers and other stakeholders,
On Monday, industry experts suggested the recent run of fair share settlements and the resulting development boom would continue under the new framework.
“Property owners or developers interested in residential development should consider this the optimal time to evaluate whether the upcoming fourth round of affordable housing compliance can provide opportunities to obtain the necessary local entitlements,” Steven G. Mlenak, cochair of Greenbaum Rowe Smith & Davis LLP’s redevelopment and land use department, wrote in a client alert. “While affordable housing development often requires subsidization through the development of market-rate housing, it is also often eligible for other economic incentives.”
Despite broad support from developers and policy organizations focused on smart growth, the DCA framework faces a challenge from at least nine towns that have sued to block the new affordable housing law, arguing it imposes excessive mandates without fully considering local conditions and resources. Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali Montvale, who leads the bipartisan coalition, said Friday that he expects to seek a stay from the state judiciary.
As noted by the Pascack Press, the DCA has identified a prospective need of 348 affordable housing units in Montvale over the next decade, a figure that could balloon to 1,740 total units when factoring in 20 percent inclusionary zoning.
“These numbers were expected to be burdensome, but the reality is even worse,” Ghassali wrote, according to Pascack Press. “The State has handed us housing requirements that defy reality and will force local governments to stretch their resources to the breaking point, while diverting attention from other critical community needs.”
DCA issues affordable housing guidelines to address present, future deficit of 150,000 units
