The pressing need in the suburbs is for affordable housing, not for MegaMansions.
By:Mary Ellen Marino
Smaller homes are being torn down at a rapid pace in many suburbs, particularly Princeton, to make room for MegaMansions. Is this the highest and best use of one of our most scarce and valuable resource land? Who needs a six-bedroom, six-bath home?
A January 2005 homeless count did find 15 families with more than five children living with them. MegaMansions are not aimed at meeting that community need. Yet inclusionary zoning can allow look-alike MegaMansions to house four or more families and still preserve the flavor of the neighborhood.
Princeton Borough Mayor Joseph O’Neill wrote a thoughtful piece on the size and costs of home construction since the end of World War II. Millions of homes were built across the country to house returning veterans and their families. These starter homes of 800 to 1,000 square feet with three bedrooms, a kitchen, dining room, living room and bath. Mayor O’Neill pointed out that basic systems, such as kitchens, account for most of housing’s cost. It is profit tat drives the excessive bedrooms and other rooms, not community needs.
Today developers no longer build such houses. But they are needed to accommodate families who already live here and fill the service jobs that make our suburban living so comfortable. Acclaimed architect Michael Graves offered a design for basic family housing at 1,200 square feet he can build for $100,000. Both Martin House and Isles stand ready to build such housing.
The Mercer suburbs need to retain loyal service personnel and provide them with decent housing to meet their needs and their incomes. In Mercer County, 25 percent of the workforce earns less than $23,370. But even "affordable housing" in relative abundance in Princeton, West Windsor, Lawrence, Hightstown, Hopewell and Hamilton, does not provide housing for any of these people A family of three must earn $31,474 a year to qualify for "affordable" rental housing.
Jobs that pay salaries below that range include cashiers, teachers’ aides, food-service workers, child-care workers, home health aides, retail clerks, lawn and cleaning service personnel. The very people we count on every day to provide a host of vital services and to take care of our children, our sick and our elderly do not qualify for affordable low-income housing.
Let us seize the opportunity to create workforce housing. We must consider the needs of the whole range of incomes needs not served by today’s developers. Creative inclusionary zoning can allow for mixed-use housing, smaller lot starter homes, renovation of abandoned commercial, hospital and industrial property, and compact condos and town houses built to meet real working family needs.
The Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness proposes that the county purchase and preserve land for workforce housing. We must develop a housing trust fund that can combine private, public and corporate investments to help fund truly affordable permanent homes. Incentives can be designed to induce businesses to donate to the new housing trust fund. Individuals could increase the stock of affordable housing by donating their homes at death.
Go to our Web site at www.merceralliance.org to see how you can help us end homelessness.
Mary Ellen Marino is the interim executive director of the Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness.