Christie recommends eliminating affordable housing agency, law

[Dan Mulligan]

This would be a good start for Cranbury. The law still needs to be changed to help lower our current obligations via one of many possible methods being discusses. However again this would be a good start for us.

Governor Christie on Thursday recommended eliminating the Council on Affordable Housing and repealing the Fair Housing Act, the agency and law that largely guided housing development across New Jersey for the past 25 years.

Describing the changes as a shift from state to local control, the Republican governor endorsed a system in which towns — rather than the state — would determine how much low- and moderate-income housing they need. The plan, which needs legislative approval, would require future projects to either include affordable housing or require developers to pay into a fund to build affordable housing elsewhere.

"This is about getting Trenton the hell out of the business of telling people how many units they’re supposed to have — some arbitrary, ridiculous formula that nobody could ever explain," Christie said. "We need to lift that wet blanket off of the municipalities and put the people who were elected back in control of making these decisions. And I believe that they’ll approach that in a fair and responsible way after having been put upon for so long with controls — undue controls — from Trenton."



http://www.northjersey.com/news/state/politics/051310_Christie_recommends_eliminating_affordable_housing_agency_law.html