TRENTON, NJ - As many officials in northern New Jersey see it, the Highlands Act and the state affordable-housing laws are two noble causes that appear to be on a collision course. On one hand, there is a law intended to preserve a huge, environmentally sensitive swath of the state that provides water to more than half the region. On the other, there is the constitutional requirement that communities have decent housing available for low- and moderate-income residents.
Last month, the two issues oddly converged when, on the very same day, the New Jersey Highlands Council adopted its regional master plan and Gov. Jon Corzine signed a bill revamping the state's affordable-housing rules. The new rules include a provision that would require one-fifth of new development in the Highlands to be set aside as affordable housing. But the Highlands plan, a blueprint for future development of northern New Jersey, makes no mention of the bill. Sierra Club Director Jeff Tittel says the omission could be the plan's downfall.
Corzine is now reviewing the plan. In a letter to Corzine, Tittel says the plan's failure to address the affordable-housing bill is reason enough for a veto. Combined with rules released earlier this year from the state Council on Affordable Housing , he writes, the plan has "a loophole that will be used to force high-density housing into the middle of the Highlands, under the guise of redevelopment and builders' remedy lawsuits."
Eileen Swan, the Highlands Council's executive director, noted the affordable-housing bill was not law when the council adopted the plan July 17. She said delaying the plan for that law would have been counterproductive. "Time is of the essence to protect the area," she said. The plan already promotes the need for affordable housing, Swan said, and "can be amended at any time by the council. Any notion that this somehow is a catastrophe is certainly overstated." Swan acknowledged, however, the Highlands Council and COAH had to work together to reconcile the numbers of new homes that can be built in the region.
According to COAH rules released in the spring, for example, Rockaway Township in Morris County, a town with about 8,000 households, would be required to have 720 more affordable units in town, Mayor Louis Sceusi said. He noted developers would likely take advantage of a law that allows builders to build multiple market-rate homes for every affordable one, so the actual number of new homes would likely be "five times that," he said.
At the same time, the township must abide by the Highlands Act. Rockaway Township is split between both the preservation area, where development is the most limited, and the planning area, where more development is permitted. According to a preliminary analysis the Highlands Council did, if Rockaway Township were to follow all the policies of the newly adopted Highlands Plan, it could build only 496 homes.
Swan noted COAH is required to take the Highlands plan into account when determining how many new affordable units are needed. But the plan was not adopted when COAH came up with its numbers she said. The two agencies will be meeting to hammer out a memorandum of agreement, she said.
Jennifer Monaghan, a COAH spokeswoman, said today by e-mail that officials there "look forward to working cooperatively with the Highlands Council to create affordable housing opportunities in the Highlands Region as required by (law) and in keeping with the region's ongoing municipal constitutional affordable-housing obligations." Sceusi, who has long considered himself a Highlands Act supporter, looks forward to "enlightenment."
"Right now, we're confused," Sceusi said. "It just gives a bad impression the state doesn't seem to know how to reconcile these things. The bot
Source: NJ.com