The Do-Nothing
Housing Council
EDITORIAL, NYTimes on
the Web, February 18, 2007
New Jersey -- For years, the
agency set up to encourage more affordable housing in New Jersey, the Council on
Affordable Housing, has done almost nothing. And even when it has come up
with a program, its rules seemed devised to allow municipalities to evade, not
meet, their legal obligations to promote affordable housing.
A three-judge state appeals court panel decided last month it was fed up.
In a unanimous, 127-page decision, the court said the rules drawn up by the
council “frustrate, rather than further” the opportunity to build affordable
housing. The court also said that the council had grossly underestimated
the state’s needs for low- and moderate-income dwellings. The judges gave
the council six months to devise a new plan with more realistic estimates of the
state’s affordable housing needs.
For their part, the council and the League of Municipalities call the decision a
setback for a genuine effort to provide housing for people with low and moderate
incomes. But that’s simply untrue. The council has approved plans
for only four of New Jersey’s 566 municipalities, and its rules would not have
come close to providing enough affordable housing units. Some background is in
order.
In the mid-1970’s, a series of rulings by the state Supreme Court required
communities to provide significant amounts of low and middle income housing.
These were known as the Mount Laurel rulings after the town near Philadelphia
where the complaints originated in 1971. In 1999, after various delays,
the affordable housing council was instructed to devise guidelines. The
council took until 2004 to write the rules and since then has approved plans for
only the four towns.
The council’s tortoise-like pace is only one of its shortcomings. It has
apparently failed to consider broader regional needs as the Mount Laurel
decisions required, and has thus underestimated by as many as 100,000 units the
state’s overall need for affordable housing. The council has also allowed
towns to restrict half of their affordable housing units to senior citizens in
order to avoid increases in school populations. The court said no more
than one-quarter of the units can be reserved for seniors.
What’s worrisome is that the very same council that has done such an abysmal job
so far will now be asked to write a new plan. Based on the record, it is
hard to have much confidence in the council and its leadership, including its
chairman, state Community Affairs Commissioner Susan Bass Levin.
One remedy may lie with Gov. Jon Corzine, who to his credit has promised to
create an additional 100,000 affordable housing units. He could ask the
state’s Department of Public Advocate to draft an effective plan and present it
to the housing council. Historically, the public advocate, which was
abolished by the Whitman administration but revived by Mr. Corzine, has been an
enthusiastic advocate of more affordable housing for New Jersey. That same
degree of commitment is now essential if New Jersey is to get the affordable
housing it needs.
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