NJ State Affordable Housing Mandate

Background

Affordable Housing obligations have been forced upon all the municipalities in New Jersey through a series of controversial state superior court decisions known as the Mount Laurel doctrine.  In essence, the decision mandates that we use our local zoning powers in an “affirmative manner” to provide “realistic opportunities” for the production of low and moderate income housing. Essentially the State has assigned to West Amwell an “Obligation” which we must meet. Setting aside the philosophical argument for or against forced altruism, the settled law requires our participation.

The Township has resisted this effort as our representatives do not believe that the Affordable Housing Mandates, as currently mandated, make sense for our community, and we are not alone in fighting these initiatives.

Click here to access the document Affordable Housing at a Glance from the Township’s website.

"Just Write a Check"

Assuming that the Township felt particularly altruistic and happened to have millions of dollars sitting unused, we could theoretically build modest houses and either rent or sell them to the qualified buyers. If we look at the theoretical "obligation" of the Township for affordable housing in 2020, it was 117 units.

To put this into perspective, let us work through a quick and dirty calculation. Our “obligation” as of 2020 was 117 units. Worst case scenario would look at single-family homes. Vacant land suitable for building a single family home would be about $200,000 (5 acres). A modest home of 1,600 square feet (at $250 per square foot) would be $400,000. Well, septic, and sitework might be $75,000 bringing the total cost per home of $675,000. Now multiply that by 117 for a grand total of $78,975,000 outlay. The total value of all the real estate in West Amwell is on the order of $650,000,000 which is comprised of approximately 1200 homes validating the thought experiment. This is obviously not a path we would entertain.

Alternatively we could look at multi-family homes, effectively creating a mixed condo or rental community. That would be very challenging to achieve while maintaining our rural character of our community. These types of communities often require painful and expensive infrastructure changes to support, such as sewer systems (a direction we do not wish to see West Amwell move towards).

What the Township is trying to avoid here is our rural, farm-dotted community turning into the Route 206 corridor in Hillsborough (go take a drive there if you haven't been there recently).

The Builder’s Remedy

The approach taken by many municipalities is to let a builder construct mixed housing projects that contain both "market rate" housing along (for which there is no mandate) and affordable housing. Typically, 20% of such projects could be designated as Affordable units, the remainder would be market rate.

In this scenario for West Amwell, 117 Affordable units would require 585 market rate homes. This would result in a 33 percent increase in our housing stock. Fast forward to the next “Round” of affordable housing where we now have 1,785 residences. The de-facto “obligation” sought by the court and their advocates has tended to be 10 percent of the total housing stock – which would mean our new “obligation” would be 18 and result in another 90 houses and on it goes.

Township Objections

How could the courts force us to accommodate 117 Affordable units in West Amwell, all things considered? During the third round of negotiations the Affordable Housing Committee along with legal council, Township planner and engineer presented extensive evidence demonstrating the irrationality of affordable housing “obligation” on the Township, including:

• No public transportation infrastructure

• Limited local employment since West Amwell is largely a bedroom community

• Limited developable tracts available

• No public sewerage

• No public water (except Music Mountain)

• Severely restrictive and expensive septic requirements

• Deep wells are required

• 50 percent of the Township is already preserved land

• Stream corridor and wetlands limitations

  
  

The Solution

In spite of these clear arguments against the affordable housing mandate in our community, West Amwell entered into an agreement with the Fair Share Housing Center (a non-profit that sued most municipalities). This agreement, while non ideal, satisfied the plaintiff. It can be accessed here. As a result of this agreement, the township established a theoretical Redevelopment Zone along route 179 here.

Redevelopment zones provide a more flexible framework than normally dictated by the Municipal Land Use Law and local zoning. This provided the Township with the tools and flexibility we need to address at least a portion of the irrational affordable housing “obligation.”

To date, no actual development has occured utilizing this plan.

Round Four

2025 brings with it the fourth round of affordable housing mandates, and major changes to the methodology with which the "obligation" is calculated. The net result is 39 units were added on top of our 117 units from 2020, for a total of 156 units.

Stay tuned - there will be more to come.

The Future

There is really no telling what the wizards in Trenton might be cooking up for us. What we must do is to push back as much as possible to ensure that we are not subjected to a “builders remedy” with the concomitant over-development.

It should be noted that the efforts to fight these mandates have been largely unseen due to the confidential nature of the legal process. But the Township is beset on all sides by developers working in conjunction with the state and non-governmental organizations to attempt build out every suburban and rural areas they an find, while ignoring the urban areas where there are existing neighborhoods ripe for rehabilitation and abundant infrastructure.