wcody
Joined: Tue, Mar 18 2008, 9:49 am EDT
Posts: 126
Location: Cranbury, NJ
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 Posted: Mon, Apr 21 2008, 11:37 am EDT Post subject: Housing push alarms towns COAH wants 115,000 more units |
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From Sunday's Trenton Times
Housing push alarms towns COAH wants 115,000 more units
Sunday, April 20, 2008
BY JOYCE J. PERSICO
Cranbury's tree-lined downtown of pristine, white clapboard houses with porches and porticos is on the National Register of Historic Places as the best-preserved 19th century village in Middlesex County.
Famed architect J. Robert Hillier, who grew up there, speaks of it fondly as an example of the quintessential small-town experience.
But if New Jersey's affordable housing agency prevails, Cranbury will be required to build nearly 625 new dwellings over the next decade in a town that currently has only 1,100 houses.
Mayor David Stout estimates the housing quota would cost the town $68 million in construction costs alone and would destroy more than 300 years of planning.
The situation Cranbury faces is a dramatic example of the potential impact of a new set of housing rules that are part of an ambitious plan to expand significantly the number of affordable apartments, condos and houses for lower- and middle-income people in a notoriously high cost of living state.
The state Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) is advocating the construction of 115,000 affordable housing units statewide by 2018, more than double its previous goal over the past decade.
But the new guidelines -- the third round since 1998 -- have sparked an outcry from residents and municipal officials who complain the plans will promote urban sprawl that would change the character of the state's remaining small towns. More than 600 comments and complaints have already been registered with COAH.
Officials in municipalities such as Princeton Borough, West Windsor and Montgomery complain that COAH is using confusing formulas and faulty data to set daunting obligations.
The New Jersey League of Municipalities has filed a raft of objections to the new rules. In particular, the association contends the quotas unlawfully would force municipalities to raise or expend tax revenues to accomplish the new goal.
"We understood that the numbers were going up," said Michael Cerra, senior legislative analyst for the league, "but they were more than doubled. No one understands the methodology that determines the need. The mechanisms for compliance have been narrowed.
"And there is a huge gap in funding. Taxpayers will have to fund this," he said.
Many municipal officials find the formulas so confusing that they are not sure just what their towns' obligations would be under the new formula. COAH has distributed its proposed rules but is telling towns to do their own math.
Attorney Stephen M. Eisdorfer of the Hill Wallack law firm in West Windsor, which specializes in land use cases, crunched COAH data himself to come up with estimates for each town in the state.
"We did it because we deal with a lot of municipalities and property owners throughout the state and a lot of people are wondering, 'What are my new third-round obligations?'" Eisdorfer said.
"We all wish COAH had done this back in 1999 when we had seven fat years ahead of us, when the crows and the corn grew fat," he said, referring to robust economic times. "Now we're facing lean years."
THE CASE FOR HOUSING
Proponents of the plan see the more aggressive push for affordable housing as a long-overdue answer to providing lower- and moderate-income families with the opportunity to live where they work and to do away with veiled discriminatory practices.
In the National Low-Income Housing Coalition's Out of Reach report for 2007-08, New Jersey is listed as the fifth-most expensive state in the nation in which to rent a home.
The report says that a person earning the mean wage in New Jersey -- $16.45 an hour -- would have to work 54 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent, and a minimum wage earner would have to work 124 hours a week for the same apartment.
The network's research demonstrates that numerous occupations -- including preschool teachers, child-care workers, home-health aides, police and fire dispatchers, security guards, school bus drivers and social workers -- do not generate enough income to allow them to afford decent housing.
Gov. Jon Corzine supports the movement and has pledged 100,000 more affordable units in the next 10 years. Last June, the Department of Community Affairs, of which COAH is an arm, awarded $54 million in affordable housing funds to make its plans work.
"The biggest misconception is that this will create urban sprawl," says Lucy Voorhoeve, executive director of COAH. "It's really for working people, the middle class and seniors. It's unfortunate that people don't realize this."
The new goals represent the latest twist in a struggle to create affordable housing that has been going on since 1975.
That's when the state Supreme Court ruled in the first of its much-debated Mount Laurel decisions that towns have an obligation to diversify their housing so that suburbs do not become preserves for the wealthy. The court said communities cannot enforce zoning rules that exclude less affluent residents.
Towns are not compelled to join COAH, but membership provides a shield against developers' lawsuits like the ones that spurred the Mount Laurel decisions.
Currently, 287 of the 566 municipalities in New Jersey are participating in the statewide program, but the numbers have dropped, COAH statistics indicate. An additional 78 towns were once part of the process.
As of September 2004, there were plans for 71,000 affordable units in place; some 39,000 units have been or are under construction; 8,300 have zoning; and 14,000 are older structures that have been rehabilitated.
Another 10,000 are regional contribution agreements (RCAs). RCAs are affordable housing obligations that towns sell to each other, such as West Windsor selling some of its affordable housing obligations to Trenton.
The latest round of COAH quotas was crafted after the state's high court ruled last year that it should become more aggressive in bringing affordable housing to New Jersey. The suit was brought by developers and nonprofits seeking higher numbers.
As a result, COAH set higher figures for affordable housing tied to such development as hotels, restaurants, offices, stores and warehouses. The rules are retroactive to 2004, when the last round of obligations was in place.
Meanwhile, the agency tightened the options for alternatives to building or approving new affordable housing.
For example, the percentage of senior housing that could qualify as affordable was cut in half.
The price on RCAs, which allow wealthier communities to transfer their obligations to urban areas instead of building housing in their towns, is scheduled to rise from $35,000 per unit to $67,000-$80,000 per unit.
There's even a bill in the state Assembly that would do away with RCAs altogether.
Voorhoeve said the agency's goals are ambitious but realistic considering the growth in the past four years.
"What were trying to impress on people is that this is a 10-year plan," she said. "It's not happening in the next 60 days. It requires long-range planning."
HIGH COST OF LIVING
No one disputes how expensive it is to live in New Jersey.
COAH sets income guidelines for those who qualify for affordable housing by considering a variety of economic factors, including market-rate housing prices in a given area.
In Mercer County, for example, the median income for a family of four is pegged at $84,566, meaning half are above that level and half below.
Families qualify for moderate-income housing with an income of $67,653; at $42,283 a year, they would qualify for low-income housing; and at $25,370 would be considered very low-income.
A new Rutgers University study showed that 20 percent of New Jersey's working families don't make enough money to support themselves.
In mid-2006, The Brookings Institution diagnosed New Jersey's competitive position in relation to jobs, housing and social challenges, and concluded the state was losing high-wage jobs and gaining low-wage jobs and had the fifth least-affordable housing in the nation.
The Brookings study also found that more than a fifth of the state's residents spent more than 35 percent of their income on housing, with the state ranking third behind California and Hawaii.
Arnold Cohen, policy coordinator for the Housing & Community Development Network of New Jersey, a statewide network of nonprofits, applauds COAH.
"People have a stereotype of what affordable housing is," Cohen said. "It's for lower-income working people. There are very little subsidies for these people out there."
Who lives in affordable housing? Cohen said it can be anyone from house-poor residents, who can't afford to live in the older houses they own because their taxes have risen along with their homes' value, to hospital workers, people in municipal government, clerks and the health-care workers who tend to someone's aging parents.
Cohen said affordable housing does not create urban sprawl if zoned properly by a municipality.
"Do you allow one unit to an acre or put in five or six and leave open space?" he said.
"Nobody says the rules are perfect," he said. "But this is going back to 1998 (the first round of affordable obligations) and it's 10 years without rules. And, as a result, towns haven't done very much. They should have realized that, eventually, they would have to meet their constitutional obligation."
Towns "that house the rich," Cohen said, "should be able to do their fair share for working folks."
BURDEN FOR TOWNS
The view is far different in towns whose compliance to COAH rules could drastically alter their character.
In Cranbury, Mayor Stout says faulty data concerning warehouses in the municipality have led to a disproportionate obligation to build housing.
For instance, COAH estimates that 2,550 workers are employed at the Cranbury Home Depot distribution warehouses; in fact the two warehouses have only 137 employees, Stout said.
In West Windsor, a 350-acre redevelopment plan has divided residents, decided a local election and, finally, settled into a scaled-down compromise for revitalizing the area around the Princeton Junction Train Station.
Everything that could come with such redevelopment -- office buildings, retail, more jobs and commercial enterprise -- carries with it an affordable housing obligation.
Add to it the thriving businesses and malls along West Windsor's Route 1 corridor and the new obligation adds up to a possible additional 832 affordable units.
Township officials complain they are not allowed to subtract the excess 112 affordable housing units it has planned from the new quotas unless they have already been built.
West Windsor Township Council attorney Michael Herbert Sr., who is also one of the attorneys for the New Jersey League of Municipalities, calls the new COAH rules "social engineering."
"These new rules frustrate the Mount Laurel goals by establishing policies that are neither fair nor realistic," said Herbert. "They've got to change them."
In Princeton Borough, at least two council members have suggested the municipality withdraw from COAH because, as Councilman Roger Martindell said, "We're not building a cornfield. (Affordable housing) is very expensive."
Nearby Montgomery is thinking along the same lines, with Mayor Cecilia Birge suggesting withdrawal from COAH after the town calculated that its quota could be as high as 1,931 units.
Then there's the view of longtime residents like Jack Ziegler Sr., who was born in Cranbury 79 years ago, raised his family there and served as a volunteer firefighter for 58 years. His father served before him and his sons afterward.
"I used to be related to half the people in Cranbury," he jokes.
Ziegler likes his town and lives in what he describes as a four-square house he bought in 1966 for $30,000 and is now worth in the neighborhood of $750,000. His property taxes have grown as well, rising to $11,000 along the way.
He was among the 300 Cranbury residents who packed a recent meeting on affordable housing there.
"This is socialism," he said.
Or, perhaps it's like ancient history, he suggested.
"It's like how Rome built the Coliseum and theaters, etc., and then destroyed everything with the wrong focus," he said.
Contact Joyce J. Persico at jpersico@njtimes.com or at (609) 989-5662.
© 2008 The Times of Trenton |
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