A growing bipartisan group of local and state officials is seeking access to more than $150 million in affordable housing trust funds, which they say could aid reconstruction in Sandy-impacted towns.
State Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon Jr. (R-Monmouth) plans to introduce legislation in the coming weeks that would allow a partial resurrection of regional contribution agreements (RCAs), a controversial policy that allows towns to transfer affordable housing quotas to other areas of the state.
After years of criticism from affordable housing advocacy groups and minority organizations such as the NAACP, RCAs were banned in 2008.
Under the proposed legislation, municipalities not impacted by Sandy would be able to transfer millions of dollars in dormant affordable housing funds to devastated communities where much of the existing affordable housing stock has been destroyed, O’Scanlon said.
“We are still spending a huge amount of time helping people navigate their way back into their homes and back into their businesses,” he said in an April 24 interview.
“Those who would say that this [proposal] is somehow destructive, quite frankly don’t understand what is going on on the ground.”
Kevin Walsh, attorney with the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Center in Trenton, said the renewed push for RCAs seems to come from towns where officials have been trying to sidestep affordable housing requirements for years.
Regardless of the reasoning behind them, RCAs are a bad idea, he said. “There are no policies I am aware of in the state of New Jersey that have been demonstrated to be as bad as RCAs were,” he said.
“It’s a policy that made the state more economically and racially segregated. Anybody who supports them has either forgotten the lessons of the past or, it would seem, supports the exclusion of working families.”
New Jersey’s affordable housing regulations, enforced by the state Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), require municipalities to provide for a certain number of local affordable units.
For years, residential developers attempting to build in a town have had to either designate a portion of the development for affordable housing or pay contributions to the town’s affordable housing trust fund, used by the municipality to construct affordable units or rehabilitate substandard housing.
The COAH requirements were lauded by advocates, who said they prevent towns from excluding lower-income and minority residents in traditionally higher-end communities.
Many local officials have opposed the quotas, however, saying they ignore affordable units that were built before COAH requirements were enacted and force towns to overdevelop.
Marlboro Mayor Jonathan Hornik, a vocal opponent of the COAH requirements and longtime advocate for RCAs, first introduced the idea of using trust funds to aid in the Sandy recovery two months after the storm.
On April 21, the Middletown Township Committee followed suit, unanimously passing a resolution supporting O’Scanlon’s pending legislation.
Committeeman and former Mayor Anthony Fiore said RCAs would aid reconstruction in neighboring towns such as Keansburg and Union Beach, where large swaths of affordable homes and rental units were rendered uninhabitable by Sandy.
“We’re also going to have a lot of areas where people are walking away from property,” said Fiore, a longtime opponent of COAH quotas.
“We have a whole street in North Middletown, nine houses in a row, where people have walked away. … Affordable housing is necessary in the Bayshore, and that’s where the money should go — not to new development.”
Walsh said the trust funds could legitimately be used to rebuild and restore affordable housing in Sandy-impacted communities without the need for RCAs.
About 60 percent of the estimated $165 million in trust funds currently available for construction or rebuilding belong to towns in Sandy-impacted communities, he said, and the overwhelming majority of funds have been committed for specific projects.
But due to uncertainty in the program and the state’s refusal to adopt clear guidelines as to how that money can be spent, towns can’t access the money, he added.
“You could go down the line in these communities and find projects that are being held up,” he said.
“But the [Christie] administration has refused to have COAH meet to decide which funds they are going to seize and which ones will move forward.”
Existing local trust funds and the billions of dollars in
Sandy recovery aid
— that has so far been awarded to the state should be sufficient to restore affordable housing in Sandy-impacted communities, Walsh said.
Both just need to be managed better, he added.
“I don’t see [O’Scanlon’s] legislation going anywhere,” Walsh said.
Officials with the state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) declined to comment on the feasibility of such a proposal.
Gov. Chris Christie dissolved COAH in 2011, ultimately bringing it under the jurisdiction of the DCA. State officials then issued a July 2012 deadline for towns to spend their affordable housing trust funds before they would be forfeited to the state.
Municipal officials fought back, saying COAH had not adopted a new, clear set of regulations explaining how and where those funds had to be spent.
After numerous legal challenges and long delays, COAH has been ordered by the state Supreme Court to issue an updated set of requirements on May 1. The new rules will have to be formally adopted by November.
DCA officials said on April 24 that they plan to comply with the court decision.
“The New Jersey Supreme Court has established a schedule for the Council on Affordable Housing to act and we will follow that schedule,” DCA spokeswoman Lisa Ryan said.