Buying a house in Monmouth County is out of the reach of many families, who are having a hard enough time affording the apartment rental rates in one of the nation’s priciest housing markets, according to an affordable housing advocate.
"Monmouth County is the least-affordable rental community in the nation. A lot of people who get up every morning, work hard and raise their kids right can’t afford a home in Monmouth County," Donna Rose told a public forum on Affordable Housing Issues held recently at Brookdale Community College.
And as the cost of housing increases — Monmouth County recently had the highest increase in the nation for single-family home prices, which jumped by 13 percent — the crisis is affecting families with higher income levels, said Rose, executive administrator of the Monmouth Housing Alliance, Eaton-town.
"I believe there is a housing crisis right now, and it is happening as incomes are decreasing … and the housing market hasn’t softened yet," said Rose, adding that the number of families in need of assistance is growing and now includes families with higher income levels.
"We’re seeing the number of families needing assistance increase, and their incomes are in a much broader range than we’ve seen before," she explained. "We’ve had families call from wealthy communities where the wage earner has been out of work for two years and they’re losing their houses."
The forum, which was attended by about 120 people, was sponsored by BCC and the Monmouth County League of Women Voters.
In addition to Rose, participants in the panel discussion were Jeffrey Surenian, a partner in the Lomell Law Firm, Toms River; Steve Heisman, executive director of Habcore, Red Bank; Peter Reinhart, senior vice president and general counsel of K. Hovnanian Enterprises Inc., Red Bank; and Larry Fink, mayor of Holmdel.
According to a fact sheet distributed by Rose to highlight affordable housing issues, a worker earning the $5.15 minimum wage would have to work 146 hours per week in order to afford the rental for a two-bedroom apartment in Monmouth County.
Put another way, a wage earner would have to earn $18.81 per hour, or $39,120 annually, to afford the fair market rent on a two-bedroom apartment, currently $978 per month in Monmouth County. But Rose said that figure is actually $1,595 because rents in the county are 50-80 percent higher than the fair market rate.
That puts housing in New Jersey out of the reach of workers from waitresses to bank tellers, the MHA data shows (see table).
Other data Rose cited shows that the median income in Monmouth County for a family of four is $74,200, down from $76,823 in 2000. At the same time, housing costs in the county have risen 71.3 percent over the past six years, and a new home now costs $582,490 on average while resales are selling for $230,000 and up. That means it takes up to three times the median income to purchase a home.
The rental market offers a similar scenario. The MHA data shows there is a zero percent vacancy rate in rental housing in the county, where rents have almost doubled in the past five years.
Waiting lists for affordable housing units are at least nine months and, in some cases, up to five years, according to Rose.
The escalating rents outpace some incomes and lead to nonpayment, one of the causes of homelessness in the county, Rose said, adding that data shows on any given night in the county more than 500 individuals and families are homeless.
Compounding this picture, Rose said, in the past 20 years the county has closed almost 48 percent, or close to 2,300, of its boarding and rooming house units, while redevelopment projects like those in Long Branch and Asbury Park remove additional rental units from the market.
At the same time, only 26,000, or approximately 5 percent, of the 550,000 building permits for single-family homes issued statewide were for affordable housing.
Surenian, considered an authority in the area of affordable housing, told the forum the Mount Laurel decisions that require municipalities to dedicate a percentage of housing units as low and moderate income, are often criticized as the cause of the state’s overdevelopment.
"There’s a lot of hue and cry about what Mount Laurel is doing to municipalities," he said. "It’s not about being against poor people. It’s about overdevelopment."
The focus of court decisions that established Mount Laurel doctrine was to ensure the poor — not developers — were the primary beneficiaries of fair housing initiatives, but "that’s not what’s happening," he said. "Reform is needed."
Reinhart, a member of the Council on Affordable Housing, said he’s concerned that the current administration has not made affordable housing a priority.
"I’m concerned that in the current debate over the future of land use in our state the issue of affordable housing is being forgotten," he said, noting that Gov. James E. McGreevey did not mention affordable housing in his annual "State of the State" address or any other public pronouncement.
Reinhart said the "Big Map" developed by the state Department of Environmental Protection as a guide to future development encourages building largely in urban and suburban areas that are already developed, while reserving the western part of the state for little or no development.
"That means no growth for about two-thirds of the state," Reinhart observed. "That would create a map of New Jersey that provides little or no opportunity for housing, let alone affordable housing, outside of areas already largely developed.
"That, folks, is the very essence of exclusionary zoning that was the subject of the original Supreme Court decisions on Mount Laurel. My fear is if the Big Map is implemented, New Jersey will return to those days of exclusionary zoning.
"We are tearing down lots of houses in Asbury Park and Long Branch, and displacing people, not building houses to replace them. Those are people who held those cities together for years and years."
By gloria stravelli
Staff Writer
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