Towns consider housing challenge

[Star Ledger]

New state rules seek more affordable units
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
BY JOE TYRRELL
Star-Ledger Staff

Eighteen towns in and around the Route 78 corridor are considering a joint legal challenge to new state affordable housing rules.

Officials were working on a draft resolution yesterday to oppose the latest requirements of the state Council on Affordable Housing, according to Clinton Township Mayor Nick Corcodilos, who organized the effort.

The New Jersey League of Municipalities already is soliciting municipal support for another legal challenge, but Corcodilos said the new move is not intended to undercut a statewide effort.

"The league's action is not in conflict with what we're doing," Corcodilos said, because potential participants in the local suit share a set of situations and regional is sues.

"I have no problem with Nick's litigation," said William Dressel, the league's executive director. "We encourage them ... I'm glad they're getting engaged."

The league has been talking to municipal officials about the COAH rules for months, "and now is the time" for communities to put muscle behind their complaints, Dressel said.

In its Mount Laurel decisions beginning in 1975, the New Jersey Supreme ruled first that towns could not zone to block construction of homes for low- and moderate-income people, then that they have an obligation to provide for such homes.

In the Fair Housing Act of 1985, the Legislature created the council to take housing issues out of the courts. But most communities continue to rely on commercial developers, who have been allowed to build multiple market-price units to subsidize the construction of each affordable unit.

The new council rules, for its third round of housing, include a dramatic increase in the overall number of units required. Corcodi los said that creates particular problems in his region, where major highways cross communities subject to Highlands Act limits on development or other initiatives to preserve open space.

The mayor said he is working with towns in Warren, Hunterdon, Somerset, Morris and Middlesex counties which have complied with COAH, but believe the council based its new housing numbers for their communities on flawed data.

While the towns have not signed onto anything yet, "they've all indi cated their interest in legal action," Corcodilos said.

Dressel said he met recently in Peapack-Gladstone with officials from a number of towns in the area, and agrees with Corcodilos that a regional legal challenge could reinforce the league's planned suit.

"Along the Route 78, there are a number of issues that are somewhat regional," which the league suit likely would not go into with any detail, he said.

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