In the News - COAH and Highlands Council

Posted by M Paradis

August 5, 2008

Who didn’t see this coming??????????’

Affordable-housing pledge clashes with Highlands Act
Lawmakers and preservationists must decide how to reconcile competing goals
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
BY PAULA SAHA
Star-Ledger Staff

As many officials in northern New Jersey see it, the Highlands Act and the state’s affordable-housing laws are two noble causes that appear to be on a collision course.

On the one hand is a law intended to preserve a huge, environmentally sensitive swath of the state that provides water to more than half the region. On the other is the constitutional requirement that communities provide decent housing for low- and moderate-income residents.

Last month, the two issues oddly converged when, on the very same day the New Jersey Highlands Council adopted its regional master plan, Gov. Jon Corzine signed a bill revamping the state’s affordable-housing rules. The new rules include a provision that would require one-fifth of new development in the Highlands to be set aside as affordable housing.

The Highlands plan, a blueprint for future development of northern New Jersey, makes no mention of the bill. Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel says the omission could be the plan’s downfall.

Corzine is now reviewing the Highlands Council’s plan. In a letter to the governor, Tittel says the plan’s failure to address the affordable-housing bill is reason enough for a veto. Combined with rules released earlier this year from the state Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), the plan, he writes, has “a loophole … (that) will be used to force high-density housing into the middle of the Highlands … under the guise of redevelopment and builders’ remedy lawsuits.”

Eileen Swan, the Highlands Council’s executive director, noted the affordable-housing bill was not law when the council adopted the plan July 17. She said delaying the plan for that law would have been counterproductive.

“Time is of the essence to protect the area,” she said.

The plan already promotes the need for affordable housing, Swan said, and “can be amended at any time by the council … Any notion that this somehow is a catastrophe is certainly overstated.”

Swan acknowledged, however, the Highlands Council and COAH had to work together to reconcile the number of new homes that can be built in the region.

According to COAH rules released this past spring, for example, Rockaway Township in Morris County, a town with about 8,000 households, would be required to have 720 more affordable units in town, Mayor Louis Sceusi said. He noted developers would likely take advantage of a law that allows builders to develop multiple market-rate homes for every affordable one, so the actual number of new homes would likely be “five times that,” he said.

At the same time, the township must abide by the Highlands Act. Rockaway Township is split between the preservation area, where development is most limited, and the planning area, where more development is permitted. According to the Highlands Council’s preliminary analysis, if Rockaway Township were to follow all the policies of the newly adopted Highlands Plan, it could build only 496 homes.

Swan noted COAH is required to take the Highlands plan into account when determining how many new affordable units are needed. The plan was not adopted when COAH devised its numbers she said. The two agencies will be meeting to hammer out a memorandum of agreement, she said.

Jennifer Monaghan, a COAH spokeswoman, said yesterday by e-mail that officials there “look forward to working cooperatively with the Highlands Council to create affordable housing opportunities in the Highlands Region as required by (law) and in keeping with the region’s ongoing municipal constitutional affordable-housing obligations.”

Sceusi, who has long considered himself a Highlands Act supporter, looks forward to “enlightenment.”

“Right now, we’re confused,” Sceusi said. “It just gives a bad impression the state doesn’t seem to know how to reconcile these things … The bottom line is going to be much more litigation, many more years of fighting … and very few affordable houses, unfortunately.”

Paula Saha may be reached at psaha@starledger.com or (973) 539-7910.