Senator Sean Kean on Affordable Housing

Scrap Affordable Housing Rules to Speed Building
By Sean T. Kean
July 8, 2008-as seen in the Asbury Park Press

Everyone should have a decent place to live. That's why the failure of the state Legislature and the state's Council on Affordable Housing to come up with rational rules for low-income housing in New Jersey is so serious.

The council approved regulations in the spring that laid out an unworkable and outrageously expensive plan that is certain to generate for decades determined opposition to low-income housing construction in New Jersey.

The rules, if followed, will harm the environment, ruin the quality of life of millions of people and drain money from other vital programs needed for a strong economy and improved quality of life in our towns and rural areas. They will slow, not speed, construction of new housing.

Adding insult to injury, on June 25 the Legislature passed into law a bill that will cut off one of the only dedicated sources of money that could have been used to comply with those same regulations.

Instead of stimulating construction of more low and moderately priced housing, these incredibly misguided policies will make it harder for everyone - rich, poor or middle class - to buy and maintain a decent home in New Jersey.

The council has been known for providing unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary guidance to local officials. Not surprisingly, the council's research that led to adoption of the new rules was based on flawed data.

A survey of available land commissioned and accepted by the council based its findings on five-year-old aerial photographs. The survey determined low-cost housing could be built on the median strips and a rest area along Route 287; on the right-of-ways along the Garden State Parkway; on land within the Picatinny Arsenal; on the grassy areas between taxi ways and runways at local airports; on legally protected open space adjacent to our reservoirs, and, perhaps most outrageous of all, in the backyards of existing homes.

Based on this fantasy, the council determined thousands of homes for low- and moderate-income residents could be constructed in already overbuilt towns and cities. Then it used a flawed projection of population growth to determine that 115,000 homes were needed, at an estimated cost of a whopping $18 billion.

The Legislature then decided communities believing they lack the capacity for more housing could no longer pay other cities to fulfill their newly inflated quotas. That meant a large source of money for low-income housing projects in urban areas disappeared. And it sent the quotas for public housing in some already overbuilt suburban and rural communities surging by as much as 50 percent.

For years, environmentalists and planners have called all types of suburban development "sprawl," and urged redevelopment and renovation of aging towns and cities.

Now the state has implemented a policy that will dry up urban redevelopment funds, and not only encourage suburban development, but require it - no matter whether a community has the resources to handle the growth. Local governments and residents will have almost no input.

Not surprisingly, the new rules already have prompted a lawsuit. The New Jersey League of Municipalities is suing to have these so-called "third-round rules" suspended. The league's suit calls the new rules "fundamentally flawed regulations based on arbitrary growth projections and an invalid methodology."

No doubt this isn't the first lawsuit that will be filed over these regulations. Towns and cities will not sit still for these new rules because the outcry from residents will force them to resist.

The most likely result will be an even slower pace of all types of construction in our state since these rules can delay not only the building of homes, but of offices, warehouses and other business buildings as well.

If we want to get serious about solving our housing problems, we need first to overturn the overreaching Mount Laurel ruling by the state Supreme Court, and then pass reforms into law that will make it easier to build housing in the areas where it makes sense economically and environmentally.
The best housing plan is one that creates the economic development needed to generate good jobs with good wages. The council's policies discourage the economic growth needed to make that happen.

I urge residents to write to Gov. Corzine and state legislators and urge them to intervene and do away with these new rules and regulations. They will hinder, not help, the construction of affordable housing in the state.
State Sen. Sean T. Kean is a Republican representing the 11th District in the Legislature.