By Audrey Levine Staff Writer
Say ending regional agreements will raise local taxes
To oppose the newest amendments to the Council on Affordable Housing’s (COAH) third-round regulations, the Borough Council approved a resolution Monday expressing its discontent with legislation passed earlier in the day that council members said would create more property-tax increases.
The amendments outlaw regional contribution agreements (RCA), which allow municipalities to pay other townships to build affordable housing units that have been mandated by the state Supreme Court.
”COAH is looking at maps, seeing open space and counting that against the townships,” said Assemblyman Pete Biondi, who voted against the amendments at the Assembly’s June 16 vote. “When you put these kinds of (requirements), it is absolutely ludicrous. We are supposed to be preventing exclusionary zoning.”
In addition, the amendments impose a 2.5-percent affordable-housing fee for nonresidential developers, which will be put into a state affordable-housing trust fund. According to the borough’s resolution, about $20 million will be appropriated from the fund to replace the RCA funds.
Because of this transfer of requirements, the burden of paying for more than 75 percent of the cost of the units would be transferred to the property owners in the municipalities.
”This is a developer’s dream,” Assemblyman Biondi said.
The amendments were voted on in the state Assembly and Senate on June 16 and Monday respectively. In the Assembly, the vote was 44-34 in favor of the amendments, with two abstentions. The Senate approved the amendments by a vote of 21-16.
Now that the amendments have been approved by the Senate, they will be passed on to Gov. Jon Corzine for final approval before COAH votes on them in the fall.
The third-round regulations, which were approved on June 2, mandate that one low- or moderate-income housing unit must be built for every five market units in a municipality that are expected to be developed sometime between 1999 and 2018. Former rules had stipulated that towns only had to build one unit for every nine market-rate units.
According to Borough Administrator Gary Garwacke, Manville currently has a two-year leeway in developing its housing plan based on these new regulations because of a June 2005 settlement with the Brooks Townhouses LLC.
In the settlement, Mr. Garwacke said, it was determined that Brooks Townhouses LLC would have the right to build 10 affordable housing units, and pay the borough $6,200 per unit.
”The judge also said we would have protection from other lawsuits until 2010,” he said. “We will be working now on our new plan over the next two years.”
When these third-round regulations were first announced in 2004, COAH’s goal was to develop 51,000 units of affordable housing in the state. To comply with a New Jersey appellate court decision in January 2007, the goal was raised to 115,000 units, based on projections from the Department of Labor, municipal historical growth rates and municipal developable land as determined by a vacant land analysis.
”In Somerset County, the land that has been determined as vacant is really preserved or private,” said Mike Cerra, senior legislative analyst for the state’s League of Municipalities.
Now, Mr. Cerra said, the league is proceeding forward with its plans to file suit against COAH. He said the decision was made about a week ago after taking into consideration the approval of the third-round regulations.
Mr. Cerra also said that the recent vote on the amendments did not influence the league’s decision to proceed with litigation.
The league has recently received support from many municipalities across the state, including Manville and Hillsborough, which both passed resolutions to promise $500 to support legal action.
Princeton law firm Hill Wallack LLP, which has challenged many towns’ affordable housing plans in court, released a list prior to the introduction of the amendments in May, which detailed the total affordable-housing obligations for all municipalities in New Jersey based on the third-round regulations. Stephen Eisdorfer, a Hill Wallack attorney, said that the statistics represent a 20-year obligation, from 1999 through 2018.
As of March, according to the chart, Manville would be required to build 42 units of affordable housing from past development obligations.
In addition, the regulations require the borough to look at the amount of units of substandard housing that will have to be rehabilitated. In Manville, 70 units must be rehabilitated, bringing the total affordable housing units to 112.
After the amendments were introduced, however, Hill Wallack released a second list detailing the obligations for each municipality once the new amendments and regulations were calculated.
”The new amendments increase our numbers,” Mr. Garwacke said.
In Manville, the only change comes in the amount of units of affordable housing to be built from past development obligations, as it rises from 42 to 45. In total, Manville’s affordable housing units obligation rises from 112 to 115.
Mr. Eisdorfer has said that these figures were calculated based on formulas provided by COAH for estimating housing obligations.
Mr. Garwacke said the borough will be working on its new plan over the next two years as it tries to determine what additional commercial building in areas such as the Rustic Mall will do to the affordable-housing requirements.
”With commercial building, new fees are collected to fund rehabilitation of the units,” he said. “We will be working on this over the next two years because we have that leeway.”
