EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK
By Ruth Luse, Managing Editor
If they had not been so poorly conceived, they would be comical.
I’m referring to the plans the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) has for our three towns, in terms of how many housing units it thinks they should provide to meet the needs of the people it thinks might be working here, as well as others.
Those who have followed this pithy and often confusing topic closely know that Hopewell Township Committeeman David Sandahl has made interpreting it and explaining its impact to others his raison d’être. He has kept the HVN up to date, while also attempting himself to fit the many pieces of this state-imposed puzzle together.
In an account this week, I was reminded of what COAH has in store for Hopewell Borough, a town of 1 square mile with a population of not much over 2,000.
Planner Carl Lindbloom reviewed with Hopewell Borough Council recently the residential and job growth estimates COAH used to recalculate the number of affordable units the town must provide as its “fair share.” Prior to June 2008, when new COAH rules were put in place, towns calculated their own projected growth.
In December 2006, the borough had a third-round plan to provide 10 additional affordable housing units (all accessory apartments) by 2014 — based on its own 2004 job survey and its own assessment of the amount of land suitable for development. However, in October, Mr. Lindbloom sent local officials a memo setting forth COAH’s new third-round fair share obligations — based on its projections of housing and job growth in Hopewell over the next 10 years. COAH sees an increase of 25 dwelling units by 2018 (from 841 in 2004 to 866 in 2018) — adding five additional units of affordable housing to the 10 units from the borough’s unmet second-round obligation.
And for job growth, COAH says Hopewell had 648 jobs in 2004 and eyes a total of 904 jobs by 2018, an increase of 256 jobs — nearly 40 percent more. Because COAH requires one affordable unit for every 16 new jobs, this means 16 additional units, or a total of 31 units of additional affordable housing required by 2018.
Hopewell’s own 2004 jobs survey showed 421 jobs in the borough, 227 fewer than the state’s estimate. How would the state know better than Hopewell’s own about how many work in town now and about possible future job growth? Where would the additional 483 people work (difference between state’s projected 904 and Hopewell’s 2004 survey that showed 421 jobs)? Does the state know something Hopewell doesn’t about future business growth?
Other than a 3-acre parcel on Somerset Street slated by the state Department of Transportation for a parking lot in the event the West Trenton Rail Line is reactivated, there is “no vacant and developable land zoned for nonresidential use in the borough,” according to Mr. Lindbloom.
About developable residential land, Mr. Lindbloom found 13 residential parcels, totaling approximately 6 acres, to be suitable for single-family, residential use. He noted the loss of about eight dwelling units since 2004. Of the two largest residential-zoned parcels in the borough, the 7.4-acre Johnson Tract is deed-restricted and a 12.98-acre parcel of Hoge Farm was recently proposed for farmland preservation.
One has to wonder if any of those involved in creating COAH’s projections ever visited Hopewell and the many other communities affected by their determinations. If they had, they might have noted that more development is not what Hopewell, for example, needs. As a matter of fact, the state goal of 115,000 additional units of affordable housing by 2018, according to the Department of Community Affairs, would have quite an overall impact on the state itself. As of 2006, New Jersey was the 11th most populous state, but it was the most densely populated, at 1,174 residents per square mile, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Why, when a major goal these days is to protect resources, such as water, would state officials want to do everything they could to do the opposite?
Hopewell could request a vacant land adjustment to limit its third-round obligation to its prior unmet need of 10 units. Officials think that goal could be met by 2018 in a reasonable fashion. It’s not that Hopewell, and other towns, do not want to provide “affordable housing” — if that’s what it really is. Towns just want to do it in ways that fit realistically into their visions for their communities. They do not want to be victims of badly conceived state plans and/or of developers seeking to make fortunes at their expense.