BY ADELE SAMMARCO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

For more than a year, Governor Chris Christie has been trying to abolish the independent Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and transfer its duties to his cabinet, citing COAH as a “bureaucratic quagmire” that has drawn bi-partisan criticism from across the state.

Lawyers for the Governor argued for hours before the state Supreme Court Monday that Christie was “within his power when he abolished COAH in 2011”, which oversees housing regulations.

Some justices questioned why the Governor was seeking such a broad-range of power that would permit him to seize control of several independent agencies.

The affordable housing debate dates back more than three and a half decades to the Mt. Laurel rulings, named after a Burlington County township in the southwest corner of New Jersey, just outside Philadelphia.

In 1975, the rulings mandated that towns provide low income residents with homes they can afford. Now, the Christie administration wants to change that rule by requiring one or two affordable units provided for every five homes developers build from a so-called "normal" consumer demand.

But advocates for low-income residents say state law forbids that type of real estate market trend approach and point to the state Legislature which passed the New Jersey Fair Housing Act, which allowed COAH to calculate a specific number of housing units to be built, regardless of how the housing market performs.

The New Jersey Supreme Court in Mount Laurel I in 1975, and then eight years later in 1983 with Mount Laurel II, declared municipal land use regulations that prevented affordable housing opportunities for the poor unconstitutional and ordered all New Jersey municipalities to plan, zone for, and take affirmative actions to provide realistic opportunities for a “fair share” of the region’s need for affordable housing for low and moderate-income people.

The Mount Laurel Doctrine, in effect, prohibits economic discrimination against the poor by the state and municipalities in the exercise of their land use powers and was the first case of its kind in the nation.

In 1985, the New Jersey Legislature, in direct response to the Mount Laurel decisions, enacted the Fair Housing Act, which permitted COAH to assess a statewide need for affordable housing, allocate that need on a municipal fair share basis, and review and approve municipal housing plans aimed at implementing the local fair share obligation. The Fair Housing Act is a law all Realtors and builders must follow or face hefty fines.

If the Governor gets his way, several justices say a chain reaction could follow, bringing the state's independent organizations and commissions under his complete control, including public defenders and New Jersey’s lobbying and campaign-finance watchdog.

Christie’s attorneys say a state law passed in 1969 allows the Governor to rearrange some agency functions, however affordable housing advocates say it should be reformed, not just handed over to Christie.

On Tuesday, in another move, Christie vetoed legislation that was designed to transform foreclosed properties into affordable housing.

Christie rejected a bill that sought to establish the New Jersey Residential Foreclosure Transformation Act.

New Jersey municipalities, as part of the bill, would have 45 days to decide whether to buy foreclosed vacant houses through the state's $268 million affordable housing trust fund.

If municipalities do not wish to purchase the homes, a newly formed corporation would buy them using federal and state financing sources and deed-restrict them as affordable housing for the next thirty years.

Christie explained his veto by telling legislators they should focus on the $300 million in existing federal funds to aid distressed homeowners, "as opposed to the unavailable and, in some cases unidentified, state funding sources that this bill relies upon."