Housing advocates planning spring rally

Mayor developing
ideas to provide
affordable housing

BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer

Housing advocates
planning spring rally
Mayor developing
ideas to provide
affordable housing
BY JOYCE BLAY
Staff Writer

Lakewood NAACP President James Waters has announced that he and other organizers of a 2003 housing rally will hold another affordable housing and jobs march and rally in Lakewood as soon as April.

"We’re looking at doing something three months in a row," Waters said on Saturday.

In September, Waters led an affordable housing march and rally for the community’s working poor, many of whom are minority residents and some of whom are in the United States illegally.

Angry residents demanded that something be done to address the issue and the effort eventually wound up in the office of former Mayor Marta Harrison, who became em-broiled in a bitter exchange with Laura Gendreau, one of the organizers of the march.

According to Mayor Ray Coles, the meeting ended with Harrison throwing Gendreau out of the mayor’s office.

Harrison said last week that she did not recall the meeting, but on Sunday Gendreau, the director and social services coordinator of the Puerto Rican Action Board, said she remembered the altercation all too clearly.

Gendreau denied she was ejected from Harrison’s office, but said the former mayor and she exchanged angry words.

"The purpose in going to see Mayor Harrison was to [discuss] the things I felt were important — the lack of housing for the working poor, regardless of racial background, and the lack of a plan of action regarding construction of low income housing," said Gendreau. "She took it as a personal attack."

Gendreau said she reminded Harrison there were 2,600 people with Section 8 housing vouchers waiting for a place to use them, and that there were 14,000 immigrants, mostly Hispanic, estimated to be living in Lakewood. She said she told Harrison that the last time govern­ment subsidized housing was built in Lakewood was the completion of the Plaza I and Plaza II apartments on Martin Luther King Drive in 1967.

Gendreau said she insisted at the meeting with Harrison that the time had come to build more, but she said that de­spite her pleas, Harrison was not sympa­thetic.

"She said to me that I had no right to be [making demands] since I lived in one town and worked in another," said Gendreau, who is a resident of Jackson. "Didn’t she ever hear of commuters? How much money I make has no relevance since at the end of the day I work for an agency in Lakewood that serves residents in all of Ocean County. I live in Jackson because my children go to better schools, but that has no relevancy."

It does for Coles, who is serving as Lakewood’s mayor in 2004.

"She claimed poor people didn’t want to live in Jackson, she said they wanted to live in Lakewood," said Coles.

Gendreau said her motivations and those of other activists were to provide the necessities of life to those without them.

"Being a homeowner and a second generation American, I’m very aware of how expensive housing is in Ocean County," said Gendreau. "I think it’s an issue we need to work on throughout Ocean County. There’s power in num­bers."

Coles and other Township Committee members do not intend to wait for Gendreau or Waters to hold another housing march and rally by spring. At the Township Committee meeting on Feb. 19, the mayor announced that a plan would be unveiled next month and would pro­vide exactly what activists and needy res­idents had requested.

On Feb. 20, Coles discussed the plan with a reporter from the Tri-Town News.

"As everybody knows, there’s less and less space for purchasing homes in Lakewood," the mayor said. "The price of the home will depend on what we can build."

Although many residents have said in past interviews that they want a home they could own, Coles said the committee was looking at rental units as well as build-to-own homes.

"What we’re looking at is tax credits — Regional Contribution Agreement pay­ments from towns with Mount Laurel (affordable housing) obligations they are unable or unwilling to meet," said Coles. "We can apply our RCA payments to the cost of rental homes."

The mayor said he is trying to put to­gether a coalition of several people he felt would be capable of helping implement the affordable housing plan. However, he said he was concerned that even the best of intentions could not guarantee that those accepted into the program would succeed at owning their own home, even with the township’s help.

"No matter how you price the house, there are always going to be people who are unwilling or unable to assume their responsibilities of home ownership. Some people don’t want to be bothered with grass cutting, leaky faucets and other ex­penses that are part of owning your own home," he said.

In order to reduce the odds of failure, Coles proposed educating those desiring to own their own home.

"There will be a training course for anybody qualified for the program," said Coles. "It will include a course on budget­ing. New Jersey Hand has made contact with Fleet Bank, [which will] offer courses on budgeting and many other ex­penses."

In addition to New Jersey Hand, a nonprofit organization, Coles and Township Committee members have been speaking to Homes for All and Lakewood’s housing authority. He said the homes sold through the program he would introduce would all be new. With three meetings scheduled next week, Coles said he was hopeful a specific plan would be ready by next month.