From the Home News Tribune:
New Jersey got yet another well-deserved wake-up call a week ago when a three-judge appellate panel unanimously ruled that the Meadowlands Commission is responsible for ensuring affordable housing be built on the 21,000 acres it oversees. Housing experts say the ruling has broader implications, especially for the large swaths of undeveloped land in the northwestern and southeastern parts of the state that also are overseen by state-appointed commissions: the Highlands and the Pinelands.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine has promised to build 100,000 units of affordable housing in the next 10 years, but his promise has rung somewhat hollow. In January, his predecessor’s affordable-housing regulations, which had been panned by advocates, were declared unconstitutional. Rather than using the opening given him to push through aggressive and much-needed reforms, the administration responded with silence and bureaucratic delay. The court gave it until July to draft new regulations; it has asked for an extension.
The latest ruling is welcome not simply because it broadens the parties that are responsible for planning and zoning for affordable housing but, therefore, heightens the possibility that affordable housing will, in fact, be built. It also is to be embraced because it strengthens the state’s hand in trying to control development in great swaths of the state’s dwindling open space. If used correctly and smartly by the Corzine administration, or any others that might follow, it also might ensure the state promotes and employs smart, new urban growth in areas it chooses to develop, rather than finding itself littered with acres of sprawl that have too often been an outcome of municipalities’ ill-conceived affordable-housing plans.
The ruling also points to the wisdom of governing affordable housing through the method known as “growth-share.” The beauty of growth-share is that it enables the state to minimize development in places like the Pinelands and the Highlands while guaranteeing affordable housing in places that need it.
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It is, in other words, much to be hoped that the ruling might spur the Corzine government to embrace affordable housing — and smart state planning with it.
They should put affordable housing in the meadowlands where there is plenty of public transportation. I don’t think it makes so much sense in the pinelands or highlands where people have to spend $5,000+ a year in auto expenses to keep a job.
Not all jobs are located near public transportation, so why should all affordable housing be near public transportation? I live in an apartment complex deemed “affordable” and it is neither located near public transportation to my job nor is it a crime-ridden property value punishing blight. People hear affordable housing and immediately think housing projects in Newark or New Brunswick. Affordable housing is what the average working New Jersey resident is asking for…a reasonably placed spot to rest our heads when we aren’t at work making life for the bigshots as easy as they find it to be.