Reassessing affordable housing

From the Home News Tribune:

Affordable-housing much needed in N.J.

The dismal word that nearly 500,000 New Jerseyans cannot afford even a modest apartment is one more alarm in a series of warnings that state policymakers must reassess affordable-housing programs and how they are carried out, with an emphasis on finally making municipalities fulfill their long-overdue Mount Laurel obligations.

Consider, as well that rental prices are robbing many low-income wage earners of their ability to afford even some of life’s most basic necessities — food and clothing, for instance — according to the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, author of the annual report.
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Forget about home ownership as an option, either. New Jersey’s home ownership rate fell 1.8 percent during the 1990s, despite that the national rate rose 4.5 percent, and by most accounts the slide continues. Housing experts cite two key reasons for the drop: a shortage of new homes that are affordable to first-time buyers and large numbers of new immigrants who put off new homes while establishing themselves. Part of the problem is that Mount Laurel has produced fewer than 30,000 affordable units in more than 20 years — about a quarter of the stated a goal.

With so much evidence pointed toward the need for affordable housing, it’s time New Jersey realizes the promise of Mount Laurel — the more than 2-decades-old state Supreme Court ruling that requires municipalities to adjust zoning laws to let in mixed-cost housing. Gov. Jon S. Corzine, to his credit, has called for the construction of 100,000 units of affordable housing within the next 10 years. Such goals, as lofty as they may be, aren’t worth a thing of course unless they are backed up by useful public policies. Currently and historically, that has never been the case.

Plenty of municipalities have routinely ignored their affordable-housing obligations under the law. Others have managed to shift that responsibility to other towns by taking advantage of rules that allow them to transfer 50 percent of their allotment to nearby communities by paying $25,000-per-unit fee. As a result, affordable housing, when it does get built, usually goes up in the less-affluent neighborhoods of New Jersey.