By Amy Batista, Special Writer
The township has joined in a shared service agreement with other New Jersey towns to retain a consultant to evaluate and propose a methodology for affordable housing planning.
“This allows us to join a consortium of municipalities throughout the state of New Jersey,” said Mayor Janice Mironov. “It’s in excess of 200 at this point that have determined to work together in retaining an expert and resource assistance for our declaratory judgment that we have filed in connection with affordable housing issues in the state of New Jersey and are pending in courts.”
The Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and the legislature have failed to properly put in place a rationale, logical, and sensible legislation to govern the state’s affordable housing, according to the mayor.
“The Council on Affordable Housing failed to adopt rules and regulations for the third round affordable housing in violation of a court imposed deadline,” Mayor Mironov said.
As a result, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued an order in March 2015 that removed jurisdiction regarding affordable housing from COAH, vested it in the local courts, and set out a series of guidelines and timelines, she added.
“In light of these events and the New Jersey Supreme Court decision, East Windsor Township took several steps to best address the requirements and protect local taxpayers and the integrity of the local planning regulations and zoning,” the mayor said.
She noted that over the past years, East Windsor has filed plans and has been certified in compliance with the state’s first round and second round regulations.
“These steps and state certification provided to East Windsor, in the past, immunity from builder lawsuits based on trying to force new multi-family housing in others not zoned for this,” she said.
With the assistance of an affordable housing planner and attorney being paid out of the developer-funded housing trust fund and pursuant to the Supreme Court timeline, East Windsor proceeded to file in court by the July 8 deadline a declaratory judgment action seeking court protection and immunity from builders’ lawsuit actions challenging local zoning based on affordable housing, according to the mayor.
“East Windsor was successful and the Mercer County Superior Court granted East Windsor Township’s request providing immunity for the maximum six months until at least Dec. 8 from any builder lawsuits to challenge zoning and force affordable housing in areas not zoned for this use in the township master plan,” she said.
The township is in the process of gathering information to prepare a plan to submit, according to the mayor.
“The township also has credits to use toward this plan from prior actions,” she said.
To date, there are no agreed upon state or court mandated numbers for each town and region for affordable housing, she added.
“The Fair Share Network in combination with the Builders Association has put out highly unrealistic and inflated and costly housing numbers to further their groups’ interests,” she said. “These numbers would create dramatic chaos, heavy burdens on taxpayers and municipalities, and are totally unachievable.”
She said that the builders and developers are “trying to profit off of this issue, by filing litigation, supporting ridiculous affordable housing requirements to tax local residents and overturn municipal zoning plans.”
According to the resolution, the township desires to participate in the preparation of a statewide fair share analysis, initially to be undertaken by Rutgers University, in order to establish a rational and reasonable methodology for determination of a municipality’s obligation to provide its fair share of the region’s affordable housing needs.
The estimated cost to prepare the initial analysis will be $70,000 and there will be a need to analyze any challenges and prepare a rebuttal report to said challenges, which are not included in the $70,000, according to the resolution.
The township’s fee is $2,000 and will be paid out of its Housing Trust Fund, the mayor said.
