Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

by: Adam Gordon at Fair Share Housing Center

Mon Nov 21, 2011 at 07:14:42 PM EST

Today, DCA Commissioner Lori Grifa announced she is headed back to her law firm job after two years as the frontperson for the Christie Administration's anti-family, pro-exclusion agenda. While New Jersey's economy continued to tank, wealthy towns placed excluding the riff-raff above creating jobs and homes, with Grifa and the Administration's enthusiastic cheerleading. Despite the rather unusual coalition of business leaders, housing advocates, special needs groups, and environmentalists pushing against them, Grifa - and the boss in the front office - refused to budge.

Grifa's successor, Richard Constable, doesn't seem to have much background in housing, community development, or municipal governance, most recently having served as Deputy Commissioner in the Department of Labor. Like many other Christie Administration leaders, he worked for Gov. Christie in the U.S. Attorney's office for many years, which Gov. Christie joked about in his press conference today. He's personally close to the Governor, according to an article in his graduate school alumni magazine.

We hope that we're pleasantly surprised by Commissioner-designee Constable as he takes on this new job. But more likely we'll see more of the same direction - more miserable failures in dealing with exclusionary communities that put blocking new homes near transit and jobs above the economy and more inaction in response to New Jersey's growing foreclosure crisis.

Because it isn't DCA that's the problem. It's the Governor's pandering to the wealthy few who are making out like bandits in this economy - and who don't feel the sting of the jobs they kill when they say no to working families, lower-income seniors, and people with special needs who want to be their neighbors.