By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
A Superior Court judge will determine the affordable housing requirements for Princeton and four other Mercer County towns, in a trial that began this week and is expected to take a couple of months before the judge issues her ruling., Judge Mary C. Jacobson, sitting in Trenton, has to set what the obligations are for Princeton, East Windsor, West Windsor, Robbinsville and Hopewell Township based on a state Supreme Court ruling in 2015. The high court said judges will be responsible for enforcing the landmark affordable housing requirements of municipalities, having concluded that the state Council on Affordable Housing, the agency that had been responsible for promulgating rules letting towns know what their housing obligations are, was not functioning., Some communities in New Jersey, including Hamilton and Ewing, have opted to settle out of court with a nonprofit group based in Cherry Hill that fights for affordable housing., “So we have about 90 settlements across the state right now representing more than 30,000 homes,” said Anthony Campisi, a spokesman for the Fair Share Housing Center, on Wednesday., The judge’s ruling will have implications for housing development and how towns grow and evolve in the coming years, as the decision will cover housing obligations for towns from a span from 1999 to 2025., “This trial is going to basically determine whether thousands of homes are built across Mercer County over the next couple of decades to meet the needs of working families,” Mr. Campisi said., His organization contends that Princeton and West Windsor have obligations of more than 1,000 units each. Towns have options for how they meet their obligations, such as extending “affordability controls” on already existing affordable housing within their community, he said., “And there are all those sort of other like incentives built in, so if a town has a thousand-unit-obligation, it never has to actually build a thousand homes. You get special incentives if you build rental housing, if you build supportive housing for people with disabilities …,” he said., Towns would get credit for affordable housing units that have been built or are under construction since 1999., West Windsor Mayor Shing-Fu Hsueh said Thursday that he is watching the case closely. He said he hopes the judge rules as soon as possible., “We are hoping for the best,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”, Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert, addressing the matter at the council meeting on Monday, said her town has “had a long-standing commitment to building affordable housing.” She said there are about 1,000 subsidized housing units in Princeton, out of 10,000 housing units total., “And it’s something that we’re proud of and part of what distinguishes our town,” she said. “And that commitment continues today.”, The town contends its obligation is more than 400 units, far less than the Fair Share Housing Center’s figure.
