Mary and Joseph visit the Statehouse Looking for a Home

by: Adam Gordon at Fair Share Housing Center

Thu Dec 16, 2010 at 04:23:32 PM EST

This happened Thursday in Trenton, and was written just after. We held the promotion till today. - promoted by Rosi

This morning, clergy and laypeople from around New Jersey gathered in Trenton, led by Mary and Joseph, to walk the halls of the Statehouse looking for a home. The walk, building off of the Latin American Las Posadas tradition, visited the Governor's office, Senate and Assembly Majority and Minority Offices, the Senate Budget Committee, and Assembly Telecommunications Committee to deliver a Christmas message that all of our communities should make "room at the inn" for hard working New Jersey families.

The Interfaith Community Action Network group, led by Rev. Julia Hamilton of the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry, Fr. Tim Graff of the Newark Archdiocese, Marlene Lao-Collins of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, Rev. Bruce Davidson of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry, and clergy and laypeople from Camden, East Brunswick, Lodi, Princeton, Summit, and Trenton, to name a few, greeted lobbyists and elected officials. A pregnant Mary and a staff-carrying Joseph showed up in committee hearings, legislative offices, and the Governor's office to ask participants in the Trenton scene to take a minute to think about the Christmas story, and the meaning of there being no room at the inn.

"In many New Jersey towns, Mary and Joseph would definitely not be welcome today - they would just be seen as a bringing a poor child into the school system which would mean property taxes might go up."

Rev. Davidson said.

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Adam Gordon at Fair Share Housing Center :: Mary and Joseph visit the Statehouse Looking for a Home

"Too many municipalities want to stop families like ours from living with them," Joseph said. "We ask for the Legislature and Governor to ensure that communities have a place for the least among us."

The group came to Trenton in the midst of a debate on the future of the state's housing policy - which has moved quickly over the past week, with the Legislature apparently on the brink of eliminating the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH). The Assembly Housing and Local Government Committee, with the support of the entire New Jersey business community and many non-profit and special needs groups, approved substantial amendments to A-3447 last Friday that removed the "$600,000 house" loophole (allowing towns to meet their starter home requirements with expensive homes) and the loophole allowing developers to make nominal payments instead of building homes. The amendments also gave municipalities new ways to be "deemed compliant" by showing progress towards having 10% of their housing stock affordable to very-low, low-, and moderate-income people, and also introduced new, reduced requirements for cities and older suburbs. The Assembly approved the amended bill along party lines on Monday.

We oppose the bill because it requires far less of municipalities than all prior laws to comply with the state's constitutional requirements have. You can read our detailed analysis here.

We do recognize that the bill is significantly better than earlier versions of A-3447 and S-1, and that Asm. Green kept his word to get rid of the most egregious features of those bills. Other than requiring too few homes - only 55,000 over the next decade as compared to COAH's 115,000 over an even shorter time period - the bill generally provides a workable framework for housing policy in New Jersey that has been missing from all earlier versions of this bill. If municipal obligations were increased to a more reasonable amount, and a few other smaller changes made, this is a bill we could support.

The Senate has the bill on its docket for Monday where it is expected to pass. Then Gov. Christie will be put in an interesting position of deciding what to do with a bill that ends COAH and ends the non-residential development fee (the Governor's two main objectives), significantly reduces municipal obligations, and has the support of the business community, but that differs significantly from prior bills he was pushing that would create even fewer homes.

It should be an interesting next couple months, and we'll keep you all posted. In the meantime, happy holidays from all of us at Fair Share Housing Center.

PS Mary and Joseph, in case you were wondering, were played by participants in the SHARE Project at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.

Pictures soon...

Tags: mary and joseph, Christie, housing, Fair Share Housing, (All Tags)

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Mary and Joseph visit the Statehouse Looking for a Home | 2 comments

There are a lot of ways that Communities (0.00 / 0)

are getting around affordable housing despite COAH - for example - Tenafly's (and other Bergen towns) blatant attempt to get rid of two family homes - which have been the affordable option for many decades and which only are allowed right now in about 15% of Tenafly. You would think getting rid of two family homes was the equivalent of the START treaty to some Mayors who cater to wealthy donors in town. Keeping property taxes high is another option keeps affordable housing out of reach. The COAH was flawed - no doubt - by counting a tear down as another house. A town was actually penalized for ripping down a run-down house in need of replacing rather than building in virgin woods - a definite crazy unintended consequence of not understanding the dynamics of building in areas where land is very very expensive. The result was an overinflated count of how many buildings were actually in a town. The rules were convoluted and difficult to navigate and often even the folks who made up the rules hardly understood what they did or what they intended - which made the goal of affordable housing the very noble goal of affordable housing hard to reach.

One Vote. Yours. It really does matter.

by: carolh @ Sun Dec 19, 2010 at 18:20:42 PM UTC

Good points (0.00 / 0)

The bill is a lot simpler and easier to understand than COAH, which as you point out is a really good thing in itself. It also fixes the whole issue with tear-downs. It has some ways for towns meet their obligation if they want by having two-family homes that are affordable over the long term to lower-income families, or through accessory apartments (i.e. in-law apartments).

However, there is nothing in the bill to really stop a town like Tenafly from restricting two-family homes from large areas of town, something we see as an issue in lots of other towns as well. Basically, the deal under COAH (and under the new bill, in a more straightforward way) is that if you do a certain amount, then you are free to be as exclusionary as you want with the rest of the zoning in your town. That's the bargain that was struck after towns pushed hard for COAH (yes, it was towns that wanted COAH, not advocates, builders, etc.)

It's funny how much so called conservatives will support the massive incursion into property rights called zoning when it's in their backyards.

by: Adam Gordon at Fair Share Housing Center @ Mon Dec 20, 2010 at 16:10:18 PM UTC

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