By Jacqueline Durett
Correspondent
EDISON—How Edison will meet its affordable housing obligation was the primary subject of discussion at the April 11 Township Council meeting.
At the meeting, the council approved a resolution accepting the township’s Updated 2016 Housing Element and Fair Share Plan, referring it to the Planning Board for review.
However, the plan’s implementation would still hinge upon judicial approval.
Attorney Leslie London explained during the meeting that because the Council on Affordable Housing had failed to establish updated rules and regulations regarding municipalities’ requirements, the issue was now being decided in the courts.
For Middlesex County, she said, the decision is in the hands of Judge Douglas Wolfson, who is trying to settle COAH-related cases by incorporating recommendations from the nonprofit advocacy group Fair Share Housing Center in Cherry Hill. She said this cooperation could potentially avoid lengthy future litigation.
“That would be very costly, and it would ensure appeals all the way back up to the New Jersey Supreme Court,” she said, adding that a compromise on the number of units has multiple benefits. “If the settlement is approved, the township will have 10 years of protection from what’s called builder-remedy lawsuits. The builder-remedy lawsuits come when a municipality has failed to constitutionally comply with its housing obligations. And in those cases, you have builders almost building what they want to build. With a settlement, you control what you build much better.”
Edison and the FSHC have calculated Edison’s obligation at 1,310 affordable-housing units; the township currently stands at 964 units, with an additional 135 units across three sites not qualifying for credit because they were built prior to 1999.
To make up for the 346 shortage of units, Edison recommends spreading its obligation across five sites currently in the proposal phase, the Metuchen Catholic Charities Senior Development’s project for Amboy Avenue; Roosevelt Hospital; Camp Kilmer; K-Land No. 66’s 220-unit apartment complex on Gibian Street; and Rivendell Heights’s 250-apartment project proposed for Truman Road. The first two sites would meet their obligation through age restriction, and Camp Kilmer’s focus is veteran housing. K-Land and Rivendell Heights would satisfy the requirement through family housing. All would be rentals.
Later in the meeting, both resident Irene Wall and Councilwoman Sapana Shah registered their frustration with the COAH process and the impact it could have on the township.
Wall specifically took issue with builders, who she saw as the winners in the affordable housing process.
“You know who gets the benefit?” Wall asked. “The builders. And I’m sick and tired of all these builders who live somewhere else, come into my town, rape our land and go back to … [places like] Rumson.”
Shah, meanwhile, pointed to a lack of long-term planning for the situation the township is in.
“We knew all along we had these regulations to follow, and we continued building, and now we have COAH, which we have to follow,” she said. “I hate to say this, I blame a lot of the politicians too, who go ahead and they sell the store away. And the rest of us have to deal with it for the next 15, 20, years and it’s really, it’s terrible.”
The Planning Board is scheduled to review the plan on April 18.