Lesniak Housing Bill Pulled; Christie Task Force Releases Pro-Sprawl, Anti-Housing Report

by: Fair Share Housing

Tue Mar 23, 2010 at 05:23:46 PM EDT

Thanks for all of you who posted supportive comments on our litigation against Gov. Christie on Executive Order 12, which he rescinded on Friday. Also thanks to Sen. Weinberg for her eloquent explanation of why she is opposing Sen. Lesniak's bill to "gut" our state's housing policies, S-1. We are writing to provide an update on several interesting developments over the last two days on both fronts.

Second, the Christie Administration, after two days of stonewalling the public, finally released the housing task force report submitted on Friday, completed 45 days early in an attempt to (a) give Gov. Christie an excuse to get out of facing the courts on Monday morning and (b) give Sen. Karrow and the other panel members time to do their taxes and go on vacation (really - she said this in the Ledger print edition on Saturday). Even Acting DCA Commissioner Lori Grifa seems to have thought the report was not coming out for a while - given that she released a newsletter on Friday, the day of Christie's announcement, saying she was looking forward to reading the report in May.  http://www.state.nj.us/dca/aff...

Not surprisingly, the report is a bit, well, rushed - it basically cribs its suggestions from the McGreevey Administration's doomed attempt to gut the state's housing laws, which builders, environmentalists, and housing advocates successfully got overturned by the Appellate Division in 2007. It is, in fact, shockingly similar to what the McGreevey Administration did, and a far cry from the promises made by the task force to come up with a new strategy for building homes near jobs and transit.

In fact, the task force actually recommends building homes further from jobs, noting that commute times in New Jersey have increased and so the state's policy should be to encourage longer commutes. Meanwhile, developments near transit should have less housing.

The task force also recommends bringing back the much-loathed Regional Contribution Agreement policy, banned by Speaker Roberts' landmark A-500 bill in 2008. The NAACP, New Jersey Regional Coalition, and others have described RCAs as legalized segregation in which wealthy towns pay cities to take their housing. We also released an analysis earlier this month showing that the policy didn't work - one-quarter of all funds transferred in the 20 year history of the program did not go to build houses, but rather sit unspent in bank accounts somewhere.

The report also has a few curveballs: recommending building more office parks and shopping centers in the Highlands (really) and counting grad student housing as affordable housing.

Maybe they could have used the extra 45 days.

Stay tuned for the next installment. In the meantime, many key groups - such as the Housing and Community Development Network, NAACP, New Jersey Future, Pinelands Preservation Alliance, and Sierra Club - are floating alternative approaches that the Assembly - and, given the failure to move S-1 on Monday, also the Senate - can take up after budget recess.