7 Town Group - In the News

Posted by M Paradis

February 7, 2008

A great article in today’s Star Ledger -
Local officials attack new affordable housing rules

Municipalities fear taxpayers will bear the brunt of higher state quotas

Thursday, February 07, 2008

BY BEV McCARRON

Star-Ledger Staff

Municipal officials unhappy with the state’s push for 115,000 more affordable homes say the new housing rules will burden taxpayers and promote overdevelopment in already-strained Somerset and Hunterdon counties.

“This is simply unworkable,” Clinton Township Mayor Nick Corcodilos said Tuesday at a public hearing in Raritan Township, where about 65 officials, planners and a few housing advocates turned out.

Under the state’s landmark Mount Laurel rulings of 30 years ago, towns were ordered to zone for and encourage construction of affordable housing. The rulings have resulted in about 41,000 homes for people with low and moderate incomes.

Now entering a new round in the process, the state Council on Affordable Housing has recalculated the amount of homes needed through the year 2018, boosting it to 115,000 from 52,000.

State Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Joe Doria insisted the homes will not be paid for by taxpayers, but funded through contributions from developers who build commercial, retail or residential projects, along with partnerships with nonprofits.

But many at the hearing disagreed.

Corcodilos, representing 10 towns in the two counties, said commercial developers will not be able to afford the fees they would be charged to subsidize the homes, and economic development in the region will be hampered.

“There are many developers out there, and I could bring them to your communities,” said Doria, a former Hudson County senator. “They are out there and they want to build.”

Corcodilos responded that towns already suffered at the hands of housing developers who went to court and used the so-called “builder’s remedy” to force towns to accept high-density developments with a provision they include low-cost housing.

The remedy allowed builders to construct one affordable unit for every four market-priced ones.

Bridgewater Mayor Patricia Flannery said her township met its quota of affordable homes, and yet was now being asked to provide four times as many as it had planned for the future. The new numbers, she said, are based on growth that may never occur.

“The new rules place an undue burden on municipalities and their residents who will now be forced to subsidize affordable housing just to meet the arbitrary, newly imposed obligations,” Flannery said.

Planner Scarlett Doyle said Bridgewater has a corporation with three buildings in the township, and has planned a fourth building of about 200,000 square feet. Under the new rules, the corporation would have to contribute $5.1 million alone for housing, she said.

The new rules, scheduled for approval June 2, would require developers to pay fees to be used to build affordable homes, at a rate of one unit of affordable housing for every 16 new jobs or every 5,714 square feet of space. It also would require construction of one low-cost home for every four market-priced homes, up from previous rules that required one affordable home for eight market-rate units.

Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club of New Jersey, said the rules don’t take into account many acres of undevelopable property that fall under the state Highlands Act, which protects highly sensitive land from development.

“They are allotting numbers to towns that are much larger than they have area to build,” Tittel said. “My concern is, it is going to be used to promote sprawl in the wrong places and not really provide affordable housing in the places we need them.”

During a break in the hearing, the fourth of five being held statewide, Doria said the new rules might be altered somewhat, but he didn’t expect any substantive changes.

If that is the case, Corcodilos said, the DCA can expect a lawsuit from municipalities.