newjerseynewsroom.com

Committee to address Senator's co-sponsored bill on March 8

BY TOM HESTER SR.

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), chairman of the upper house's Economic Growth Committee, said Monday the panel can be expected to vote March 8 on legislation he is co-sponsoring that would abolish the state Council on Affordable Housing and give cities and towns more control over providing middle- and lower-income housing.

Lesniak made the comment during a second public hearing on the proposal (S-1) in Trenton where affordable housing activists were given time to question or state their opposition to the measure before a crowded audience.

Lesniak said the bill he places up for a vote will be what he described as a committee substitution with amendments that would mandate that urban governments actually use the money they receive from wealthier suburbs through so-called regional contribution agreements to provide affordable housing, and tighter standards on towns deciding how much housing they must provide.

Randall M. Gotlesman, president of the Raritan-based Affordable Housing Professionals of New Jersey, told the committee the bill should ensure that a state agency oversees the towns in providing the housing and use of the money they receive to do it. He said the state should also oversee the pricing and resale of affordable houses and the application process.

The bill, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Christopher Bateman (R-Somerset), would also eliminate state-imposed affordable housing obligations and permit local governments to do their own affordable housing planning. The State Planning Commission would have the role of assisting municipalities in providing affordable housing.

To ease what is described as pressure on municipalities to meet affordable housing goals, the legislation would permit regional contribution agreements that were in the works before they were outlawed in 2008 to be reviewed and approved through the end of 2011.

Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah Healy told the panel he would welcome the return of regional contributions as a way to help fund affordable housing in the state's second largest city.

"We have always been a destination for working people, poor people, and immigrant minorities of every culture and we still are,'' Healy said. "We are aware of the need to keep a good corps of citizens in our cities and Jersey City has consistently done everything it could to produce affordable housing.'' He added, "We want the state to provide assistance rather than a rigorous set of rules. The state has been an obstacle, sometimes and impediment to building.''

Lesniak maintains that allowing the completion of regional agreements could allow for the production of as many as 5,000 houses and apartment and the transfer of up $116 million to cities for housing rehabilitation and redevelopment.

The legislation (A-2071) would also allow municipalities, following a reexamination of their master plan and housing element, to adopt an ordinance declaring that they've determined that they have provided an opportunity for an appropriate variety and choice of housing and have complied with their obligations under the Fair Housing Act.

The bill would require municipalities that don't adopt an ordinance determining compliance to instead adopt a specific inclusionary zoning ordinance ensuring that low- and moderate-income housing is built whenever market rate units are developed.

Paul Bellan Boyer, chairman of the Collingswood-based New Jersey Regional Coalition‘s housing task force, said the legislation has to ensure the elimination of what he called the scourge of racial and economic segregation the lack of affordable housing in the suburbs has caused.

"The fact is the cities that saw the rise in the last two decades of regional contributions have seen the poverty rate grow,'' Bellan Boyer said. He said opposition to affordable housing from towns such as Parsippany-Troy Hills and Cranbury has forced towns such as Ewing, Pennsauken and Gloucester to absorb poverty and low-income housing.

"This bill, as proposed in it's current form, will spark more legal battles and pit towns against one another,'' Bellan Boyer said. "We very much agreed the system is in need of reform but we need solutions to the housing crisis, not another decade of legal actions."