From the Courier Post:
Roberts takes aim at housing inequalities
Those who earn low and middle incomes could find it easier to move into wealthy communities under a controversial proposal by state Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts.
Roberts, D-Camden, says rich towns need to take their share of people who can’t afford the highest-priced homes. Under current law, they don’t have to. They can pay another town to provide it for them. As a result, police officers and teachers aren’t always able to live in the communities they serve. At worst, Roberts blames the policy for creating poverty sinkholes like Camden, which has been banned from accepting another town’s affordable housing burden under the state takeover agreement.
“I think that the use of RCAs (regional contribution agreements) in New Jersey has resulted in immense concentrations of poverty in our urban core,” Roberts said. “It is directly responsible for our communities and our public schools to be so highly segregated. I view it as a cancer.”
For decades, wealthier communities dodged building their share of what the state calls affordable housing through the “regional contribution agreements” with poorer communities, which build homes for low-income people.
“I believe higher-opportunity segregated white communities have used RCAs as a tool to keep their doors closed,” said Barbara Heisler-Williams, executive director of the Fund for an Open Society.
The bill responds to a loophole in the Mount Laurel decisions, court cases banning zoning to prevent affordable housing. The state says every municipality must provide affordable housing proportional to development. RCAs allow townships and boroughs to farm out up to 50 percent.
Some activists compare RCAs to bribery. Older, cash-strapped suburbs in the state rarely say no.
Pennsauken, an exception, turned down an approximately $3 million RCA from Medford in 2005.
“Ultimately they (the township council members) came to the conclusion that it’s really the moral obligation of every community to take their fair share of humanity,” said Bob Cummings, Pennsauken’s business administrator. “We have homes in Pennsauken for the very first home buyer as well as homes that are in the mid $300,000, high $400,000 (range).”
This sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Anyone think otherwise? Would poorer urban areas suffer if RCAs were abolished?
“A lot of urban areas have used the RCA funds as seed money, to bring in more money to towns,” said Mike Cerra, senior legislative analyst for the state League of Municipalities.
[…]
RCA money is often used for redevelopment rather than new housing. Redevelopment of existing housing is vital in cities and older, poorer suburbs than in swiftly growing regions like Burlington and Gloucester counties, Cerra said.
I have heard it both ways. It has clearly been used by wealthier communities to divert what is their “obligation” (I hate the term). I see the multitude of municipalities as the problem and no coherent regional planning. (The Highlands Council doesn’t count because they really don’t address housing all that much and it is very much an afterthought to them.)
Our home rule state has exacerbated much of the affordablity problem. In the outer counties there is limited sewerage and large bulk requirements which have little basis on the nitrate dilution model which is formulated on soil types(for septic systems). They have more to do with exclusionary practices imo. I think that the DCA/COAH and DEP have given a pass to these areas because they want to see little development in the region’s fringe. I would even argue that they want to see full build out happen more rapidly and thanks to the Highlands it will happen that much faster.
Interestingly, the basis for the Mount Laurel decision was about bulk requirements going from 1 acre to 2. Now many towns in the NW NJ region require 10 acres and in some extremes 20 and 25 acres. I would call that exclusionary in light of the fact that the septics only require 1.5 to 4 acres in most areas based on the nitrate dilution model.