By Lauren Otis
The prospect of increasing the density of housing in a community often brings forth certain fears by residents, but once these “knee jerk reactions” have been dispelled the benefits become apparent, said Peter Kasabach, executive director of New Jersey Future.
”Smart housing zones” — parts of a municipality that have been rezoned for higher density housing development — are a great way to increase the vitality of older communities that have a downtown where people can shop and work and live, “mixed-use, walkable communities. Princeton is a great example,” said Mr. Kasabach. New Jersey Future is pushing state legislation that would establish incentives for communities to adopt higher-density zoning, he said.
Mr. Kasabach made his remarks at the Princeton Theological Seminary, at a seminar on workforce housing sponsored by the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce Public Policy and Regional Issues Committee.
The trend in New Jersey has been one of rising housing costs, with a lack of affordable housing being constructed, and inefficient development patterns, resulting in decentralization and sprawl, Mr. Kasabach said.
”What we’ve been building during the last decade is large houses,” he said. Development is also occurring in less-dense parts of the state, with sprawl encroaching on rural areas and open space, Mr. Kasabach said. “We are losing our job centers,” he said.
But when communities think of adding density, all sorts of not necessarily rational fears surface, Mr. Kasabach said. There is the fear that greater housing density will result in more children who will overload school systems, he said. Many communities actually have excess school capacity so this isn’t a problem, he said.
Fears are also raised about increased traffic, but traffic can be good for shops and the commercial health of communities, Mr. Kasabach said. “Traffic is not necessarily a bad thing. It is how it is managed,” he said.
Other adverse reactions include the view of suburban residents that “we don’t want our area to be urbanized,” and a fear of change for a community of any kind, Mr. Kasabach said. “There is a lot of this knee jerk reaction that when you start to go underneath you can dispel some of the myths,” he said.
Mr. Kasabach urged attendees to support the legislation that would create a smart housing zone program, modeled after a successful initiative already under way in Massachusetts. The program would “provide fiscal incentives to municipalities that would change their zoning,” he said, $1,000 for each new housing unit a municipal zone was changed to accommodate. Funding would come from existing state programs and support from the New Jersey Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
A further $4,000 per unit would go to municipalities, funded by developer’s fees, once the housing was actually built, Mr. Kasabach said. If a town rezoned for 100 additional housing units, which were built, it would get $500,000, he said. Mirroring Council on Affordable Housing guidelines, the housing developments would “have to have a mix of incomes,” he said, including 10 percent low, 10 percent moderate, and 10 percent a new middle-income category, with the remainder market rate.
Mr. Kasabach said builders would be willing to pay the extra fee because they would financially benefit from the extra density of the developments they could build as well as the fact they would know the town welcomed the development.
Mr. Kasabach said the program was not intended to be a mandate pushing municipalities to make their downtowns denser, but was instead meant to further encourage municipalities that might already be looking at downtown development. “These incentives push those towns over the edge, and help them build support for doing these sort of things,” he said.
Jay Biggins, executive managing director of Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co., a firm that helps corporations with relocation strategies, said providing adequate middle-income housing was critical for attracting employers to locate in a region because middle-income employees are a large percentage of corporate labor forces.
Jeremiah Ford III, founding partner of Ford3 Architects LLC, said architects have been trying to solve the workforce housing problem for generations, with their projects often attracting ridicule from all sides. “The workers hate it because they want to live in their own little castle in the country like the rest of us,” he said.
Mr. Ford said old zoning systems did not take into account the varying, different face of the contemporary workforce, and for the future communities will need “a much different set of housing.”
”A lot of single people, a lot of single parents, a lot of retired people, a lot of people who are coming out of college and entering the workforce, this is not taken care of by the zoning ordinances that we have,” Mr. Ford said.
Mr. Ford said the response is often “Princeton is all built out,” when the subject of updated zoning is broached. “What are you gong to do with that type of thinking? We have to show them better ways to do it.”
Sandra Persichetti, executive director of Princeton Community Housing, said “mixed zoning works” based on the PCH experience. At Princeton Community Village there is an income cap to get in, but tenants can continue to rent there even if their income goes up. So over time the housing project has grown into a true mixed-income project, she said.
And at PCH’s Griggs Farm, which includes low- and moderate-income rentals and subsidized units for sale, as well as market rate townhomes for sale, many of the market rate owners have no idea there are low- and moderate-income residents among their neighbors, Ms. Persichetti said. “It works. It works as an inclusionary zoning development,” she said.
”At Princeton Community Village 80 percent of our residents work in town,” at a variety of service and other jobs, Ms. Persichetti said, adding “and many of the 20 percent are retired from working in town.”
Ms. Persichetti said she supported an incentive program for housing such as the smart housing zone program, but said mandates might sometimes be needed as well.
”I do have some reservations. I think there are many communities who just don’t want new development. They are against change, no matter what it is,” she said.
