Highlands Development Slowing

From the Daily Record:

Highlands development still up, but showing signs of a slowdown

The number of housing units in Morris County and four of the other counties with land in the Highlands region rose from 2004 to 2005, but not as much as earlier this decade, according to census data released Monday.

Opinions on what forces account for the slowed growth varied among government officials involved in land use issues.

Officials with the New Jersey Highlands Council, which is drafting a master plan for the region, and the counties say the numbers are not detailed enough, and it’s still too early to tell the impact the law has had.

“These numbers are countywide, so I cannot surmise if the Highlands Act has had any effect on the number of new housing units,” said Christine Marion, a Morris County planner. “I also think that we would have to wait until 2006 until we see more of an effect, since those developments approved in 2004 may not have been built yet.”
…
According to the new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released Monday, Morris County added about 1,100 new housing units between July 2004 and July 2005 to 182,328. That’s less than half the increase that occurred between 2000 and 2001 and represents an increase of .6 percent. Between 2000 and 2004, the annual increase in housing units in the county averaged 1 percent.

Similarly, Sussex, Warren, Somerset and Hunterdon counties all posted housing gains that were smaller in 2005 than they had been through 2004. Warren, which had been the fastest developing county through 2004, ranked 6th in its rate of growth between 2004 and 2005, at 1.2 percent.

Of Highlands counties, only in Passaic was the increase in the number of housing units from 2004 to 2005 higher than earlier this decade.