While most of America’s — and New Jersey’s — attention was focused this past weekend on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his monumental contributions to the cause of civil rights, an important anniversary closely related to this cause passed virtually unnoticed.
Twenty-five years ago, on Jan. 20, 1983, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its landmark Mount Laurel II ruling — reaffirming and reinforcing its earlier finding that exclusionary zoning, denying people of low and moderate incomes the opportunity to live in certain communities, was prohibited under the state Constitution.
The movement spearheaded by Dr. King, and the struggle epitomized by the Mount Laurel legal case, have many parallels.
It took years to turn demonstrations, marches and acts of civil disobedience in the South into a body of federal law barring discrimination based on race. And it has taken a generation since then to break down many (but by no means all) of the barriers that still face people of color in this nation.
Likewise, it took eight years to turn the court’s groundbreaking 1975 Mount Laurel decision into a plan of action that had teeth. The 1983 Mount Laurel II ruling directed that if municipalities did not zone for low- and moderate-income housing, developers had the right to provide such housing under the so-called “builder’s remedy.” As the court put it, “We may not build houses, but we do enforce the Constitution.”
Since then, about 40,000 low- and moderate-income homes have been built, and about 15,000 more rehabilitated. In addition, some $210 million has been spent by suburbs to enter into Regional Contribution Agreements (RCAs), allowing them to transfer their housing obligations to urban areas. And about $350 million has been collected and spent by a state housing trust fund.
Yet the barriers to families of limited means remain imposing in many of New Jersey’s suburbs. Some have used RCAs to pay for low- and moderate-income units to be built in nearby cities, in effect buying their way out of their own affordable-housing obligations. Others that have actually permitted such housing to be built, or been forced to accept it under a “builder’s remedy,” have gone out of their way to make sure it is, literally, on the other side of the tracks — or, if that isn’t possible, at least abutting a landfill, an abandoned factory or a neighboring town.
It is a sad but indisputable fact that the spirit of both Mount Laurel decisions has been violated by the policies, statutes and regulations they have spawned, and that the vision the Northern Burlington County NAACP had when it filed the lawsuit challenging Mount Laurel Township’s exclusionary zoning has not been fulfilled.
Nor, we fear, is it mere coincidence that a large proportion of low- and moderate-income families who still find New Jersey’s suburbs so inhospitable to them happen to be black and Hispanic.
Yes, America has come a long way since the days when blacks were consigned to the back of the bus, barred from entry to white establishments and denied the right to vote. And yes, New Jersey has come a long way since towns zoned exclusively for the affluent, allowing nothing but single-family homes on large lots.
But we’ve still got a long way to go. A major first step would be adoption by the Legislature of a package of bills introduced by Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts — calling for, among other things, elimination of RCAs. At the very least, this would compel towns to provide affordable housing within their own boundaries, a principle that lies at the heart of the Mount Laurel doctrine — and represents a bit of unfinished business in pursuit of Dr. King’s dream.
