In the News - COAH
Corzine signs affordable housing overhaul
By GREGORY J. VOLPE
Gannett State Bureau
In a scene reminiscent of a Southern Baptist tent revival, Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed legislation on Thursday overhauling the state’s affordable housing policy that advocates called landmark and critics called another property tax raiser.
It “is the most important housing reform legislation enacted in the nation, in the past two decades,” said David Rusk, a housing consultant retained by the New Jersey Regional Coalition.
With gospel music, sweltering summer sun and sermonesque speeches, officials, clergy and advocates touted the measure, which Corzine signed at the Ethel R. Lawrence townhouse community named for the woman whose lawsuit led to the Supreme Court decisions that said every town has an obligation to set aside affordable housing.
“This is a day of hope, but it’s also a day of accepted responsibility,” said Corzine, adding. “The right to an affordable home in New Jersey is just that — it’s simply a right.”
The legislation most notably bans regional contribution agreements, or RCAs, the process in which richer towns can sell off their affordable housing obligations to poorer ones.
“It concentrates the poor in the most impoverished cities, locking them into enclaves of disadvantage,” said Bishop Joseph Galante of the Diocese of Camden. “Out of sight and out of mind with jobs and opportunity out of reach.”
Among other provisions, the new law also levies a 2.5 percent tax on nonresidential developers to build affordable units and sets aside a portion of affordable units for very low income families — those earning less than 30 percent of median household income.
Peter J. O’Connor, executive director of the Fair Share Housing Development Inc., which litigated the case spurred by Lawrence, who died 14 years ago, said his 40-year effort is neither a legal nor legislative issue.
“It is a moral issue of how we as people treat each other,” O’Connor said.
Medford Mayor Chris Myers, running against state Sen. John H. Adler, D-Camden, for Congress, and a handful of other Burlington County state and local officials attended the signing to voice their opposition.
“This is essentially an unfunded mandate,” said Myers, saying the development fees won’t be enough to build homes; towns won’t get any relief for the increased demands on schools, police and other services new affordable mandates would bring; and that the new construction fee could drive developers from New Jersey to surrounding states.
The legislation, coupled with new rules from the Council on Affordable Housing that doubled the amount of affordable homes New Jersey municipalities would be obligated to build, have drawn protests from local officials.
The New Jersey State League of Municipalities, with the support of about 180 mayors, filed a challenge to those rules, saying officials erred in their calculations. Some 19 other towns filed a separate protest.
The league, which opposed banning RCAs, said it cautiously encouraged by a statement from Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts, D-Camden, who said he wants to ensure the state’s new goals are appropriately calculated.
“It would be naive to believe that, left unaddressed, this will not negatively impact taxpayers,” league executive director William G. Dressel Jr. said in a statement.
Reach Gregory J. Volpe at gvolpe@gannett.com
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