DEAR NEIGHBOR
By:Hugh Brennan
The Hillsborough Promenade is the fruit of white racism.
Before your eyes glaze over follow me on this one. We are having this monstrosity imposed upon our little green jewel of a town by a legal machine set in motion to remedy centuries of anti-black discrimination.
Mt. Laurel, the Coalition on Affordable Housing, builder’s remedies, affordable housing, fair share. You see the phrases and words repeated in all these tedious and Byzantine land-planning and development disputes, but what do they mean? And how did we get here?
There have been few if any more glaring examples of the road to hell being paved with good intentions, or more perfect demonstrations of unintended consequences than the mess the state Supreme Court generated with the two landmark Mt. Laurel decisions.
The road from an honest, even inspired, fight for social justice to destruction of the environment and the democratic process is long and torturous, but instructive.
Ethel Lawrence and her neighbors were long-term residents of the burgeoning suburb of Mt. Laurel. Some of them were descendants of free blacks whose presence in the community predated the Revolution.
When, in an attempt to replace sub-standard housing with new low-cost apartments, their request for a variance to the town’s single-family only zoning was rejected, they turned to the courts. This was in 1970. By 1974 the first Mt. Laurel decision was handed down.
In effect, this ruling held that exclusionary zoning was, in effect, a form of institutional racism. The court found a constitutional right for people of all income groups to affordable housing in all the state’s communities.
If zoning for large lots and single homes only had the effect of making a community unaffordable to lower-income citizens, and lower income citizens were more likely to be minority members, then such zoning is inherently discriminatory.
At a stroke, the court overruled the zoning process of 500-odd communities that 300 years of precedent and democratic process had created.
It also struck a blow at that engine for progress the steady climb to the suburbs represents for most American families.
In response, virtually every community in the state did everything it could to avoid compliance. This led to further litigation and the much more comprehensive Mt. Laurel II of 1983.
Judge Wilentz, writing for the majority, presumed to create a judicially mandated process of assessing a town’s "fair share" of low-income residents, and to provide a series of "remedies" to overcome exclusionary zoning.
This is where the builder’s remedy enters the picture. The court empowered builders who would agree to build low-income housing, to override the local planning process. In return for building affordable housing, the builder gets the right to overcome restrictions on density and lot size.
The political firestorm engendered by this decision led to the Fair Housing Act of 1985.
Under the guise of establishing an orderly process for statewide compliance with the court’s decision, the act actually mitigated the impact of Wilentz’s order by creating a process by which affluent towns could transfer significant portions of their fair-share obligations through direct payments to the older, poorer towns and cities.
It also created definitions of low- and moderate-income housing that allowed towns to receive credits for housing the elderly and lower-income local residents and workers. This in effect continued to block most of the "inner city" (minority) poor from access to the suburban paradise promised by the original decisions.
It is outside the scope of this column to detail the incredibly complex procedure by which a fair share is assessed and a compliance plan is submitted and approved.
The act runs to dozens of sections and subsections, but in brief, it establishes the New Jersey Council On Affordable Housing.
COAH, an 11 member board of the Governor’s appointees, contains representatives from builders, community groups, both parties and the public at large.
The council’s staff is tasked with inventorying the state’s available buildable land, determining the existing housing stock , assessing the need for affordable housing by region and negotiating compliance agreements with the various townships and boroughs.
Hillsborough, like many towns, sought to escape forced builder’s remedies, by submitting and receiving certification of a fair-share plan. Once COAH gives its seal of approval to a plan, that town is immune to builder’s remedies lawsuits for six years.
We, unfortunately, put all our eggs in the Greenbriar basket. In 1996 Hillsborough agreed to support Greenbriar on the condition that 15 percent of its units would meet affordable housing guidelines. This would cover our fair share, and secure COAH’s protection from the developer’s suits.
As is well-known, the prospect of sewer-line extension, 3,000 new housing units and the rapid demise of a rural section of the township created a groundswell of opposition, and the township government has expressed the popular will by reversing itself on the Municipal Development Agreement of 1996.
COAH, in turn, stripped Hillsborough of its certification, leaving us open to the current raft of legal assaults.
No greater example of the corruption of the original intent of Mt. Laurel can be found than the Hillsborough Promenade situation.
To overcome every argument of logic, the public safety and the democratic will of a population inflamed with a desire to preserve their open spaces, nothing more is needed than the threat of a builder’s remedy suit.
The town fathers know that the expense in public services of dense residential development is overwhelming.
They are doing all that they can to preserve maximum open space and to slow residential growth. They do the math on a 900-unit development on 75 acres and see a big drain. The result: our latest big box downscale center.
Does anyone really think Mr. Krame wanted to build houses for poor folk? Does anyone think the late Judge Wilentz wanted to destroy farms and wood lots for shopping centers and golf courses?
It is time to revisit the entire Mt. Laurel concept. It is an artifact of an earlier era, the real estate equivalent of school busing, but even less effective.
This hammer presented to developers by the court is used to smash local zoning. This lever is used to pull apart the plans made by citizens eager to preserve the beauty of rural New Jersey.
It has not resulted in any appreciable number of the inner-city poor finding new lives and new homes in the suburbs.
We are in universal agreement on the need to contain sprawl. The state plan, the watershed plan, farmland and open space preservation are all undercut by the unintended consequences of Mt. Laurel and the fair housing act.
In this election year, our would-be governors should be forced to address this question. It is time to leave the 1970s behind.
Tragically, Mrs. Lawrence did not live to enjoy the new homes her efforts led to, but then very few minority low-income people have.
The fruits of Mt. Laurel have flowed to our richest citizens, not our poorest. The cost of Mt. Laurel has not been borne by the exclusive preserves of wealthy, white privilege, but by the broad mass of our increasingly diverse middle class suburban population.
It’s not about race and poverty; it’s about money, big money.
Hugh Brennan is a free-lance writer who lives in Hillsborough.