newjerseynewsroom.com

BY TOM HESTER SR.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The Fair Share Housing Center Monday filed a legal brief asking the state Appellate Court to stay and invalidate Gov. Chris Christie's executive order of last week that halted the work of the state Council on Affordable Housing while a task force he appointed studies the state's role in providing affordable housing.

The housing advocacy organization also asks the court to appoint a special master to oversee COAH's operation.

"We have opposed this action because it will continue a decade-long pattern of delay that started in 1999, in which administration after administration has studied COAH with little to show,'' said Kevin Walsh, counsel for the Cherry Hill-based non-profit housing organization. "Just as the agency finally began operating last year and affordable housing has started getting built, Governor Christie has shut it down again. We also have opposed the action because it raises grave constitutional concerns about the governor claiming unlimited power to contradict the Legislature and sidestep public process.''

Walsh's brief argues the state Constitution provides that the Legislature should make the laws and the governor should enforce them. He argues the executive order is unconstitutional because it shuts down a state agency that was created by legislation and ignores several previous public processes that led to how the agency works today.

Walsh also argues the courts have already required COAH to adopt regulations under strict time frames. He argues further delay undermines the state constitutional requirement that all towns provide their fair share of housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income people.

"We also request that the appellate court appoint a special master who can monitor COAH's actions,'' Walsh wrote.

Walsh has charged that Christie's order puts 45,000 potential affordable houses and apartments at risk.

Last Tuesday, Christie signed an order that halts all work by COAH unless state Community Affairs Commissioner Lori Grifa decides it would hinder an opportunity to provide affordable housing.

The order creates a five-member Housing Opportunity Task Force headed by former senator Marcia Karrow (R-Hunterdon). The group has 90 days to produce a public report that is to include an evaluation of crumbling housing instead of new construction and assess the state's current affordable housing system.

Christie's order calls COAH's procedures "excessively complex and unworkable.'' It also declares the "delays and controversy'' over the current methods "strongly suggest'' there are may be better ways for the state to play a role.

The governor's action comes as the Legislature considers a bill that would eliminate COAH and give cities and towns a greater role in deciding how much affordable housing they should provide, if any.

During his campaign for governor, Christie told potential voters he wanted to "gut'' COAH.

The transition team that examined the operation of the Department of Community Affairs for the governor recommended that COAH be disbanded and its employees fired.

A 1975 state Supreme Court ruling and another in 1983 held that every New Jerseyan is entitled to affordable housing and that cities and towns have a role in providing it. While the majority of New Jersey's over 600 towns have provided some sort of affordable housing -- usually reluctantly -- over 200 have ignored the issue.

Critics of COAH's housing rules cost municipalities tax dollars and make them provide unnecessary housing.

The COAH regulations Christie is questioning stem from a Appellate Court ruling in 2007 that struck down a 2002 move by Gov. James McGreevey to place COAH's housing policies on hold. The court held McGreevey was creating a "dramatic and inexplicable'' delay in enforcing the state's laws, and ordered him to proceed with carrying out the state government's obligation to help provide low- and moderate-income housing.