The New Jersey Senate yesterday passed a bill to abolish the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and return all authority for the siting of affordable housing to individual cities and towns, The Star-Ledger (Newark) reported today.
Senators Ray Lesniak (D-Union), Kip Bateman (R-Somerset), and Jeff Van Drew (D-Cape May) sponsored the measure, which passed 28-3.
COAH was created in 1985 in response to the two Mount Laurel decisions. At issue then was the common practice by local zoning boards of effectively forbidding any developer to develop residential properties that the poorest would-be residents could afford. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that any resident, no matter how modest his means, needed a "realistic opportunity" to live in an affordable home. According to Peggy Ackerman and Claire Heininger of The Star-Ledger's Statehouse Bureau, a home or apartment is considered "affordable" if and only if the total expenses of renting amount to 28 percent or less of a tenant's income--or the total expenses of homeownership are 30 percent or less of a homeowner's income. Rent, mortgage, utilities, homeowners association fees, insurance and property taxes go into the calculation of affordability.
The problem: the attempt to guarantee affordable housing everywhere has provoked dozens of lawsuits. Worse than that, according to Senator Lesniak, the State has produced a "byzantine maze" of rules that create confusion rather than affordable-housing units.
Under the proposed law, every city or town would have to set aside 10 percent or more of any residential development for affordable housing--or else the developer would have to pay the city or town $75,000 per unit that would otherwise have had to be low-price or low-rent. The town could then use the money to build affordable units elsewhere.
Governor Christie proposed a measure like this about a month ago, according to The Star-Ledger.
This is about getting Trenton the hell out of the business of telling people how many units they’re supposed to have — some arbitrary, ridiculous formula that nobody could ever explain.
Senator Lesniak has been pushing this kind of revision even longer--since March.
The only question that no one has answered is who is judged--or entitled--to be a resident of a given town, and who isn't. One commenter phrased it excellently:
I can afford to live in Woodbridge but I want to live in Short HIlls...so now I call Lesniak and I'm in???
Others suggested that zoning itself is the problem, because it imposes an inherent cost on all development.
The bill (S-1) has one more cloud hanging over it: an allegation that Lesniak inserted a rider into the bill designed "to divert money meant to build homes for the poor to a pet project located on his street in Elizabeth," according to an article by Ackerman published last week, this after the Senate Economic Growth Committee passed S-1 7-0 to send it to the Senate. Lesniak vehemently denied the allegation and called his accuser, Kevin Walsh of the Fair Housing Center, several kinds of ungentlemanly names.
Nevertheless, the unanimous vote for the measure in committee (a thing that Lesniak could never have dictated), and the overwhelming vote for the measure in the full Senate, strongly shows that the governor has more support than usual, even within the Democratic party, at least on certain issues that affect government spending.Like this article? Want to be notified of more? Click Subscribe, above.
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Comments
Good that is why I wrote my Rep and asked him to support this Bill.
Affordable housing concepts led to Andrew Cuomo's push for change in bank lending procedures during the Clinton administration. The spread of unwise subprime lending practices ensued culminating in the 2008 bailout. The rest as they say is history.
Sounds like this bill should have been instituted long ago.
Chris Christie needs to be cloned.
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