Bernards Affirms Affordable Housing Money is Spent

The state Council on Affordable Housing is calling for  projects, but township officials say the money in dispute already has been handed over to two group homes being built for disabled residents.

And it isn't the first time the township has notified COAH that the funds already are gone, Township Administrator Bruce McArthur said on Tuesday night.

The Township Committee at Tuesday's meeting put on the record that McArthur had sent out yet another certification to Trenton outlining how the funds from the local Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund were spent.

McArthur said that in the past week or so he had just repackaged and added to a similar certification he had sent to COAH last year. He said the township never has received a response to the previous correspondence.

Municipalities all over New Jersey received letters from COAH in May saying affordable funds collected in 2008-09 would be seized if the money hadn't already been spent or committed to acceptable affordable housing projects. 

McArthur said that $250,000 apiece from Bernards' developer-financed fund already have been handed over to group homes for disabled adults being developed by Cerebral Palsy of New Jersey and another organization, Our House.

Previous payments from the fund — financed by a system set up by COAH several years ago that required market-rate developers to contribute to affordable housing in certain communities — went to projects such as additional housing at Ridge Oak Senior Housing in Basking Ridge, McArthur said.

COAH's attempts to seize unspent funds collected in the two-year period have landed the state council in the state court system, as reported in philly.com and elsewhere.

Bernards Township Attorney John Belardo reported on Tuesday night that the state court set up a system giving municipalities the right to a hearing before the towns' affordable housing funds could be seized.

A new deadline of June 28 has been set for collecting submissions from towns certifying how they would use the affordable housing money. McArthur said Bernards Township's most recent submission also preceeded a June 10 deadline for the certification.

Belardo said he believes that Bernards is in "much better shape" than some other towns in being able to prove that the collected affordable housing funds have been allocated as intended.

"There definitely are towns out there who have held funds for years and years and years and have done nothing," Belardo said. He said it is likely that those are the municipalities that COAH might go after first.

Township Committeeman Scott Spitzer called COAH's action "outrageous," and said the township should seek a court injunction to halt any seizure of funds "if they come after us."

COAH had been largely inactive before meeting at the beginning of May and sending out the letters seeking to take over the developers' fee funding from those two years.