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Are you for or against New Jersey's new affordable housing law?
- Against it
- For it
Last week, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law a bill making it easier for municipalities to get funding to build more affordable housing and track its progress in meeting its benchmarks, under the Mount Laurel affordable housing doctrine.
"We will be able to create more certainty and lower costs in New Jersey’s affordable housing landscape," Murphy said of the legislation.
The Mount Laurel doctrine was created after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in 1975 that every municipality must "make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing," and could not stop opportunities for low and moderate income housing.
Beginning in 2025, the Department of Community Affairs will publish non-binding calculations of municipalities’ current and prospective need for affordable housing using a formula based on prior court decisions.
Disputes about municipalities’ affordable housing obligations and plans to meet those obligations will be resolved on an expedited basis by the court with assistance from a new dispute resolution program.
The bill abolishes the Council on Affordable Housing and aims to streamline compliance and reduce legal issues that lead to delays in constructing affordable housing. A bonus credit system will be introduced to encourage municipalities to build age-restricting housing, housing for people with special needs and housing near mass transit stations.
Murphy said while New Jersey's population is booming, it is outpacing its supply of affordable housing. Last year, New Jersey permitted more new housing units than New York for the first time. The state faces a shortage of more than 200,000 affordable housing units, Murphy said.
"This legislation will enable us to build new, affordable housing, where it is needed, with far fewer hurdles," Murphy said at a bill signing ceremony in Perth Amboy on Wednesday, March 20. "Creating more affordable housing will also help close the racial wealth gap and help more families escape generational poverty. Nobody, in our great state, should ever have to worry about finding a safe, comfortable place to call home."
Not everyone is on board with the bill. The township of Wayne passed legislation on Wednesday, March 20, urging Murphy to veto the bill, though it had already been signed by the time the resolution was approved.
The resolution said there is no analysis of the economic impact the bill would cause, even though it mandates billions of dollars of construction in the state and schools and governments will bear the cost of increased housing. The council wanted the bill to be rewritten with more input from municipalities, professional planners and economic experts weighing in, according to the resolution.
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