Newark Mayor Ras Baraka
By Joshua Burd
Newark city officials have set out to create or preserve 6,600 units of affordable housing over the next five years, part of a new plan aimed at helping lower-income and homeless residents.
According to Mayor Ras Baraka, hitting the goal would double the number of affordable homes that the municipality created or maintained from 2015 to 2020. It will look to do so with the help of federal funds from the American Rescue Plan, prioritizing units affordable to Newark residents making less than 30 percent of the area median income.
The mayor on Monday also outlined goals such as supporting 1,500 new and 200 existing low- and moderate-income homeowners in the city.
“An equitable city is built on the foundation of affordability,” Baraka said during an announcement at 550-552 South 18th St., a six-family affordable building constructed by Eugenia Hamlett. “Our new housing goals and the actions outlined to achieve them will help us ensure all Newark residents have access to safe, decent and affordable housing and that our city continues to be a vibrant gateway to opportunity for all, regardless of income, race, ethnicity or immigration status.”
Additionally, Newark aims to convey all of the vacant properties currently held by the city or its recently established land bank that are suitable for residential development and not currently under Residential Development Agreements, according to a news release. Under the plan, at least 30 percent of the units developed on those sites would be affordable to residents with incomes at or below 80 percent of the AMI.
Other plans call for supporting 10,000 vulnerable or unsheltered households annually and adding 3,000 new market-rate and affordable housing units across all five wards that are ready for residents to move in.
City officials developed the goals with a working group convened by the mayor, tapping more than 30 representatives from community-based organizations and nonprofits, developers, housing advocates, private companies, municipal departments, the Newark Housing Authority and the agency known as Invest Newark. Led by the Office of Affordable and Sustainable Housing, with support from Bloomberg Associates, the group spent the past eight months reviewing the city’s past housing efforts, understanding current programs and creating quantitative housing affordability targets.
“I want to thank the Housing Working Group for creating bold but achievable goals,” said Allison Ladd, Newark’s deputy mayor and director of economic and housing development. “Their work sets a clear direction for Newark and will shape our collective housing efforts as we recovery from the pandemic and reinvest in our communities.
“The housing goals provide a roadmap to ensure we maximize funding from the American Rescue Plan, Treasury Emergency Rental Funds and American Jobs Act, as well as state and local sources, to meet the needs of Newark’s most vulnerable residents.”
Ladd noted that the Working Group’s efforts were guided by Homes Beyond Reach: An Assessment and Gap Analysis of Newark’s Affordable Rental Stock, a report released in February by the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity. Working group member David Troutt co-authored the report, which detailed the affordability gaps in Newark’s rental stock, as well as input and recommendations from the city’s Equitable Growth Commission.
“It has been a pleasure to work with the city on this bold planning initiative,” said Victor Cirilo, executive director of the Newark Housing Authority. He said the agency “has pledged its development capacity to assure that Mayor Baraka’s and the city of Newark’s affordable housing creation and preservation goals are met.”
