State Senate Looks To Change Regulations For Affordable Housing

The New Jersey State Senate has passed legislation that will soon change affordable housing obligations for many municipalities across the state by changing zoning laws and officially doing away with the Council on Affordable Housing if passed by the state Assembly.

The state senate passed the Fair Housing Act in 1985 to create legislation that gave municipalities the constitutional obligation to provide affordable housing to low and moderate income families.  Now, 25 years later, the Senate Economic Growth Committee has introduced a substitution bill to revise many of the requirements set forth by the Fair Housing Act, and to do away with several conditions that some believe have come to hurt the state's economy.

Rumors have circulated that some municipalities will be exempt from creating more affordable housing in the future, but that is not the substitution's intention.  According to Sen. Raymond Lesniak's director of communications, the substitution will require all municipalities across the state to reassess their obligations to provide affordable housing. 

"All municipalities, regardless of their current housing stock, will have an affordable housing set-aside for all qualifying future developments," said Erin Caragher, in an e-mail explaining the bill.

According to the Senate Economic Growth Committee's statement, the substitution would also eliminate the state mandated calculations that are used to determine a municipality's need for affordable housing. Under the new law, a community will be deemed "inclusionary" if it has seven-and-a-half percent of its housing stock price restricted or if 33 percent of housing is multi-family or mobile homes.

"Those municipalities that are deemed to not have a reasonable amount of affordable housing will have to zone 20 percent of their developable land for workforce housing," Caragher said.

The substitution will also require that 10 percent of any residential development project that has 20 or more units to be set aside for low to moderate income housing. Municipalities will also be able to give preference to families that already live and work in the town to apply for low income housing there, something that was prohibited under the original law and a major bone of contention with many local officials.

While those municipalities that will be asked to zone specifically for affordable housing were not known before going to press, some in Summit already believe that the substitution is a step in the right direction for the residents of the city and the state as a whole.

Council member Michael Vernotico, an opponent of COAH's policies, said that Summit in particular has a history of supporting low income families by creating affordable housing opportunities in the city. He believes that the recent substitution has been a dramatic change for the better.

"One of the great ironies, in calculating our requirements and supply, is the fact that we actually had three affordable housing projects before COAH that we don't get credit for," he said. "Summit has always done more than its share in terms of providing for minorities and lower income people."

While the substitution would not take full effect until next year, Vernotico thinks that the new requirements will be helpful to the state and Summit in the long run.

"The last group of legislation was unworkable," he said. "(It's) such a dramatic change, back to something that's workable and manageable."

Executive Director of Morris Habitat for Humanity Blair Bravo, a significant interested party in any legislation on affordable housing and a partner in the Interfaith Community Build set to be built on Morris Avenue, could not be reached for comment at press time.

Stay tuned to Patch for more updates on this bill and how it might effect affordable housing in Summit.