Gov. Phil Murphy delivers the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Address in the Assembly Chambers in Trenton on Feb. 27, 2024 — Photo by Edwin J. Torres/Courtesy: Governor’s Office
By Joshua Burd
Gov. Phil Murphy has signed a landmark bill to revamp how New Jersey calculates and enforces each town’s obligations for affordable housing, setting a path for a new phase of residential development across the state under the Mount Laurel doctrine.
Murphy joined lawmakers and other stakeholders in Perth Amboy on Wednesday to enact what he called “a monumental piece of legislation that will make housing more affordable and more accessible for working families all across New Jersey.” Namely, the measure requires the state Department of Community Affairs to determine each municipality’s obligations by year-end, while giving local governments the opportunity to devise their own plan and participate in a mediation process, with the goal of avoiding litigation and reaching a resolution by Jan. 31, 2025.
As the governor noted in prepared remarks, the bill would look to streamline a process that has been “a central public policy challenge” in the 49 years since the landmark Mount Laurel decision, in which state Supreme Court ruled that municipalities could not impede opportunities for low- and moderate-income housing, and the subsequent Fair Housing Act.
“For decades, all three branches of government have wrestled with how to apply the principles of Mount Laurel in practice,” Murphy said. “At times, our state legislature has tried to address this issue. At other times, the process for determining affordable housing obligations was left to an executive branch agency.”
Murphy’s team and lawmakers have worked in recent months “to craft a new process where all three branches of government are involved,” he said, with the next round of state-mandated affordable housing requirements for municipalities set to begin July 1, 2025. The new framework has in turn emerged as part of a package of bills tied to affordable housing, which passed the Assembly last month and the Senate on Monday with support from key stakeholders such as the Fair Share Housing Center and the New Jersey Builders Association.
The bill’s primary sponsors include Troy Singleton, Nicholas Scutari and Teresa Ruiz in the Senate and Yvonne Lopez, Craig Coughlin, Benjie Wimberly and Verlina Reynolds-Jackson in the Assembly.
“(With) the main bill I am signing today, we are going to establish clear rules for how municipal affordable housing obligations should be calculated,” Murphy said. “It incorporates the standards that courts have used that have proved workable in practice. And this legislation will give municipalities bonus credits, as well, for constructing affordable housing where it is needed most, like near transit hubs, or for providing housing for vulnerable populations, like our senior citizens.”
Adam Gordon, executive director of Fair Share Housing Center, added: “This new law ensures that New Jersey will have one of the strongest frameworks in the U.S. to require affordable homes in historically exclusionary communities. This will help tear down the walls that have denied too many in our state access to opportunity and create new affordable homes near jobs, schools and transportation. We commend Governor Murphy and the legislative sponsors — chairs Singleton and Lopez, Speaker Coughlin, and Senate President Scutari. This new law implementing the Mount Laurel Doctrine — requiring every municipality to provide fair housing opportunities — is a useful blueprint for beginning to address the nationwide housing crisis.”
Aside from abolishing the defunct Council on Affordable Housing, the bill requires DCA to complete its calculations under a newly established statutory formula and publish them within seven months of the bill’s effective date. It also allows a municipality to diverge from DCA’s findings as long as it adheres to the methodology established by the bill, while requiring that a town adopts its obligation by a binding resolution on or before Jan. 31, 2025, in order to shield itself from so-called builder’s remedy lawsuits that developers have long used to secure approvals for projects that included affordable housing.
Interested parties may challenge a municipality’s calculations and subsequent plans for meeting its obligations, according to the measure, giving way to a new dispute resolution program that is managed by the state judiciary.
“S50 will put us on a pathway to even more success in the next round of affordable housing obligations, scheduled to begin July 2025,” Singleton said, referring to the legislation by its bill number in the Senate. “With clearer guidance and less legal disputes, affordable housing obligations can be fulfilled faster, expanding opportunity for New Jersey families.”
Coughlin, the Assembly speaker, added: “We have an obligation to expand opportunities and make housing more affordable in our state. When more families are secure in homes of their own, they contribute to their communities and our economy thrives. This legislation strikes the right balance in incentivizing opportunity and providing support for municipalities.”
Bill to create new affordable housing framework clears state Senate, heads to Murphy’s desk
