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[quote="Guest"][quote="Guest"]to be clear we had to live in and sell 3 homes before we had money to live in Cranbury.[/quote]

Frankly, that sounds like the American Dream at work.  Good for you, really.  People work hard and save and aspire to earning a better life.  You did.  What's wrong with that?

I commute 17 hours a week back and forth to my job in NYC to earn the money to have the life I want for my family in Cranbury.  I can’t afford to have that life near my work in Manhattan.  Should someone subsidize me so I can live there near where I work?  Where is that right spelled out in the Constitution?  Where is that a principle espoused in the any of the documents of the Founding Fathers.  When did the proximity of housing to work become an inalienable right?

Cranbury is a tiny, middle class community.  We are surrounded by other communities, only minutes away, some with even more affordable housing options.  If someone can’t afford to live in Cranbury, why can’t they live where they can afford to?  Why does Cranbury’s tiny taxpayer base need to pay for other people’s housing while commuting hours a day to earn the money to do so?  While I support the idea that a State or even a large City should concern itself with affordable housing options, I an unclear why that burden falls to every community, no matter how small.

For that matter, it’s not clear that the premise for localized affordable housing is even true.  The theory is we need to supply local housing for local workers.  But, again, there are affordable options, in East Windsor for example, that are minutes away and in many cases just a close in practical commute as Cranbury to Cranbury’s industrial sector where a vast majority of the jobs are.  Let’s be honest.  The real reason people would want that housing is to be part of our school system.  And I can’t blame anyone for aspiring to that.  But why is our community, why are the taxpayers who have often struggled and sacrificed to move and live here and pay for a school entirely funded from local tax dollars, obligated to also pay for the housing of others who would like to be part of that school system?  I have lived in many places in the US.  And I have seen bitter battles over public school zoning.  But that was at least all based on people who did live in those districts.  I can’t think of any other place where the implication was that a community literally needed to build the housing to import people into their school districts.  That just doesn’t strike me as an essential human expectation and seems very un-American.[/quote]

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