New Jersey municipalities had until the end of January 2025 to decide on their affordable housing plans for the next decade.
In October, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs published calculations for how much affordable housing municipalities must build or preserve by 2035. Housing experts estimate New Jersey faces a shortage of more than 200,000 affordable housing units.
These calculations follow a new bill signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy to boost affordable housing and strengthen enforcement of the Mount Laurel Doctrine, a constitutional mandate first set by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1975.
The new law requires that half of all affordable housing units built must be reserved for low-income families, at least 13% of homes must be reserved for very low-income residents, and the remainder reserved for low- to moderate-income residents.
“The law has a lot of power to desegregate communities in New Jersey,” says Jag Davies, Policy and Communications Consultant at Fair Share Housing Center, the housing justice nonprofit legally designated to represent public interests on affordable housing.
The state anticipates that these new obligations will create 84,698 new affordable housing units in addition to preserving 65,410 existing housing units across the state by 2035. That’s an average of 150 additional units per town, according to Gothamist.'
What is the Mount Laurel doctrine?
The Mount Laurel Doctrine is a New Jersey constitutional obligation that requires municipalities to provide their “fair share” of affordable housing.
In 1975, Black and Latino residents and local NAACPs filed a class action lawsuit against the Township of Mount Laurel, arguing the town’s zoning laws were being used to exclude working-class communities and people of color from housing opportunities. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in favor of organizers, making exclusionary zoning unconstitutional in the state.
Gov. Murphy signed legislation in March to standardize the Mount Laurel doctrine, noting that lawmakers had struggled for decades with how to put the principles of the constitutional obligation into practice. The new law streamlines how much housing municipalities should build and offers “bonus credit” incentives for municipalities that can construct affordable housing where it is needed most, such as nearby transit hubs.
What could affordable housing look like?
There are two kinds of housing obligations to pay close attention to under the new calculations, according to Davies of Fair Share Housing Center:
“Present Need,” or the number of existing affordable housing a municipality must preserve or rehabilitate, and
“Prospective Need,” or the number of new affordable housing a municipality must build.
Davies explained that the number and types of affordable housing could depend on a number of factors. For instance, Glen Ridge has no existing housing units to preserve but needs to build 178 new units, while Newark has 4,630 affordable housing units to preserve but is not required to build new units.
“Because urban municipalities like Newark already have historically built way more affordable housing than suburban municipalities – for most urban municipalities, their entire obligation under the law consists of rehabilitating affordable housing,” Davies says.
Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Jacquelyn A. Suárez said in a press statement that New Jersey may see more “missing middle” housing built as a result of the law, types of smaller multi-family housing that have declined in recent years.
“The new law provides a unique opportunity to develop ‘missing middle’ housing—options like townhouses, duplexes, and other types of multi-family units that bridge the gap between single-family homes and large apartment complexes, offering the diverse housing choices that New Jersey families desire and need,” Commissioner Suárez stated.
Davies adds that while the new law will make a “pretty substantial dent” in increasing the state’s housing supply, “more complementary policies are needed to really address the housing needs of extremely low-income people in New Jersey.”
What are Essex County’s obligations?
Essex County municipalities are expected to build 3,768 new affordable housing units and preserve 9,957 existing units across the county’s 22 municipalities. That means about 1 in every 25 affordable housing units the state wants to see built could be in Essex County.
According to New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, the white median income is $125,100, which is more than twice the Black median income of $54,700 in Essex County.
Laura Smith-Denker, Managing Director of Litigation at Fair Share Housing Center, explains that “wealthy outliers [in Essex County] like Millburn, which have resisted affordable housing for decades, demonstrate why enforcement is crucial to safeguard affordable housing for New Jersey’s low-income residents” while Millburn’s neighboring towns, including Livingston, West Orange, and South Orange, have “built a lot of affordable housing.”
What will enforcement of the new housing law look like?
New Jersey is divided into 15 Superior Court vicinages, each overseen by a designated Mount Laurel Judge. For Essex County, that’s Judge Cynthia D. Santomauro, a former North Caldwell councilwoman who will serve until 2027. These judges are tasked with enforcing the Mount Laurel housing obligations and hearing any court proceedings related to Mount Laurel.
Davies of Fair Share Housing Center says that prior to the new housing law, there wasn’t one established methodology to calculate affordable housing obligations. “Different judges [were] coming up with different numbers in different areas.”
The new law codifies the Jacobson methodology (coined by Mercer County Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson), which considers vacant land, median household income, and other factors, according to NJ Spotlight.
Smith-Denker says that failure to comply with affordable housing obligations could result in additional negotiations. She adds the new law establishes “an alternative dispute resolution program that will be facilitated by retired/on-recall Mount Laurel judges” but that the specifics of the program are still being determined.
“Should towns not participate in the program, they will be vulnerable to typical Mount Laurel litigation (builder’s remedy, exclusionary zoning, failure to meet obligation, etc) in the court system,” Smith-Denker says. Failure to comply could mean additional litigation like builder’s remedy lawsuits, which could be costly and force municipalities to meet affordable housing requirements mandated by state laws.
What to expect in 2025
More than 20 towns, including Millburn in Essex County, have filed a coalition lawsuit to overturn the new housing obligations, which could delay the state’s affordable housing plans.
Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali, who is leading the coalition lawsuit, says that he is not against building affordable housing but that the town doesn’t “have the infrastructure to support the fourth round [of obligations].”
Ghassali says that longstanding challenges like a 50-year sewer system, transit safety and lack of incentives for developers are the primary concerns to building more affordable housing, not race.
“[Montvale] is a diverse town, so for them to say it’s about race and we don’t want poor people and people of color, [it’s] totally false,” Ghassali says. He argues that following the 20% inclusionary standard for affordable housing, Montvale would need to build up to 1,740 units total to meet the town’s requirement of 348 affordable housing units, as “no developer will build only affordable [units] because they don’t make money on it.”
He adds that the lawsuit is the coalition’s attempt “to say we want to build, [but] we want to build what we think we can and where, based on the environmental issues, infrastructure, and school system.” The next court date for the lawsuit is Dec. 20.
Davies of Fair Share Housing Center encourages people to look critically at where pushback is coming from. He argues that the lawsuit comes from a small group of “predominantly white, wealthy towns” that don’t represent the state’s population. Montvale’s population is less than 2% Black, while New Jersey’s overall population is 15% Black.
“[These towns] don’t do that when warehouses are being built or luxury mansions… You only hear these arguments when affordable housing comes up.”
Fair Share Housing Center says New Jersey municipalities have until Jan. 31, 2025 to accept or challenge the housing calculations. If a municipality decides to challenge the calculations, it has until the end of February 2025 to push back, with all negotiations required to be settled by March 31, 2025.
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