What are we doing to increase the amount of affordable housing in New Jersey?

“The defining issue of housing today is impermanence,” says Adam Gordon, executive director of the Fair Share Housing Center, who will be one of three speakers talking about the new bill, S50/A4, signed into law by Gov. Murphy on March 20, 2024, that creates a permanent legislative-based system that will assign housing obligations to municipalities in New Jersey.
The event will take place on Wednesday, November 13, 6:00-7:30 pm, at the Jewish Center, 435 Nassau Street, Princeton (as well as online). State and local experts will talk about the new statute and how it will work in municipalities throughout the state. The event is cosponsored by The Jewish Center, Congregation Beth Chaim, and Har Sinai Temple.

At a familial level, insufficient affordable housing can mean “experiencing homelessness or being unsure whether you can afford the rent next year,” Gordon says, asking people to imagine “what it means as a family for kids to move every year from school to school or whether you will be able to stay in a community or housed at all.”

Despite recent increases in affordable housing in New Jersey, we still face an estimated shortage of over 230,000 homes, with 14 prospective renters for each vacant home.
The Mount Laurel court decision 50 years ago outlawed exclusionary zoning and mandated a judiciary-supervised process for assigning affordable housing obligations. Individual communities are assigned numbers of affordable housing units they are obligated to build in a specified time period, based on a percentage of area median income. Units may be built, for example, by nonprofits, with the help of government grants, as in the case of Princeton Community Housing, as well as by developers who include a percentage of affordable units within a large market-rate development.

Senator Troy Singleton, the bill’s Senate cosponsor and Senate Majority Whip, will lead off with a statewide perspective. Continuing the discussion will be panelists Gordon and Valerie Haynes, former president and long-time board member of Princeton Community Housing, guided by moderator Peter Buchsbaum, former Superior Court judge who, as an attorney, has worked on resolving disputes between developers and municipalities on issues concerning affordable housing.

For information and to register for the event, contact Linda Oppenheim, linda.oppenheim@gmail.com. Also please send any specific questions for the panelists about affordable housing to Linda.