Low-cost housing wins
Court orders new
plans for units
By GREGORY J. VOLPE,
Home News Tribune Online, January 27, 2007
TRENTON -- An appellate court
decision released Thursday gives the state Department of Community Affairs six
months to devise a new plan for municipalities to fulfill their court-ordered
mandates for affordable housing.
Affordable housing advocates, who challenged the constitutionality of the
Council on Affordable Housing's most recent rules, claimed victory and called on
Gov. Jon S. Corzine and Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Susan Bass
Levin to come up with a plan that sets forth a reasonable number of affordable
units.
"The court found that Commissioner Levin and COAH manipulated the needs figures
so that they were so low to be unrealistic, unconstitutional and contrary to any
real, reasonable, rational basis," said Peter J. O'Connor, executive director of
the Fair Share Housing Center, which brought one of four lawsuits challenging
the state's affordable housing plan.
Levin issued a statement saying she was "deeply concerned" with parts of the
decision that could limit construction of new affordable units, but noted the
court found COAH's approach to affordable housing — tying obligation to new
construction — was constitutional.
"Sound planning and environmental policy is the foundation for the growth-share
approach — that towns should plan comprehensively to include affordable housing
as they grow and develop," Levin said.
On that, the court said, "Growth share methodology can be valid only if COAH has
data from which it can reasonably conclude that the allocation formula can
result in satisfaction of the statewide need."
Franklin Mayor Brian Levine, whose township was required to institute a plan to
build more than 700 affordable units under the old rules, said the original
concept was a good idea, but it was poorly carried out.
Levine cited his own township's situation where members of the council were
accused of colluding with a developer to build the affordable homes in the
wildly unpopular Bennetts Lane development, which would have included more than
600 houses just off Route 27.
"I hope this gives us a chance to redo our plan, which was a fiasco and put
money into the hands of large contributors to the town," Levine said. "In
our case, this can eliminate the sleaze factor."
The New Jersey State League of Municipalities called the decision a boon to
developers and bane to those who need affordable housing.
"It's a windfall for the developer and it's a step backwards for affordable
housing," said William Dressel Jr., the league's executive director. "It
was a pro-developer decision, and we're very upset because it's now placed
100-plus plans that are before COAH in limbo."
But the New Jersey Builders Association and housing advocates said the rules
were prohibitive for building new units.
"We really haven't lost anything because we really weren't getting anything,"
said Paul Chrystie, executive director of the Coalition for Affordable Housing
and the Environment.
Added Stephen M. Eisdorfer, the lawyer for the builders, "This is an instance
where the builders and advocates of low-income housing were fully aligned," he
said. "We weren't going to be able to build it, and they weren't going to
be able to live in it."
The decision means that more than 260 municipalities' affordable housing plans
must be scrapped until new rules are adopted.
The court also struck down a rule that permits municipalities to dedicate half
of their affordable units to senior citizens, ruling it discriminatory against
families with children.
The court did not squash the use of regional contribution agreements, or RCAs,
in which a town pays another — usually urban — to take some of its obligation,
despite claims that these arrangements exclude the poor from the suburbs.
Contributing: Staff Writer David Stegon
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