State Sets Affordable Housing Quota For Princeton. What To Expect

PRINCETON, NJ —New Jersey recently released the affordable housing quotas for towns and cities, including Princeton. And they have the next 10 years to meet the needs of residents.

Last week, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs released its highly anticipated list for 2025-2035.

The calculations include numbers for “present need” (existing housing units deemed substandard/deficient and in need of repair), and “prospective need” (the number of new units that will be needed based on population trends).

A law passed last year gave DCA the authority to determine how many affordable housing units municipalities must create and maintain.

Here are Princeton's numbers:

• Present Need: 60
• Prospective Need: 276

Municipalities have to come up with a plan to meet their quotas and get it approved by state officials by next summer – unless they plan to challenge the numbers. Read More: New Affordable Housing Mandate Released By NJ (See Your Town's Share)

So what does that mean for Princeton? Council president Mia Sacks who is the chair of the Council’s Affordable Housing, Planning, and Redevelopment Committee, said the new numbers are in the range of what Princeton expected.

"The new legislation incentivizes towns to begin working on their housing plans at the beginning of Round 4. This enables us to plan concurrently for impacts to schools and local infrastructure to ensure that growth is introduced and managed responsibly over the upcoming 10-year period," Sacks said.

Local governments have until Jan. 31, 2025, to either approve the numbers or provide their own calculations consistent with state law, the New Jersey League of Municipalities noted.

Then, officials have until June 30, 2025, to adopt specific plans for how they will meet that need.

All towns are constitutionally mandated to provide their "fair share" of affordable housing for the region, under the Mount Laurel Doctrine.

Sacks said that Princeton is prepared for upcoming housing obligations, as the new numbers are part of a more orderly process.

"Advocates for the 4th Round Legislation expressed the need for an approach that would provide consistency, clarity, and predictability in determining municipal fair share obligations," Sacks said.

"This first step was critical — and will go a long way toward bolstering the credibility of the process as a whole. The numbers were delivered on time, as promised, with an easily accessible and transparent explanation of DCA’s fair share methodology. Municipalities are provided with the formulas, criteria, data sources and calculations that led to their advisory number."

All upcoming developments in town offer affordable housing units and they go towards meeting the third-round obligation.

Meanwhile, the new law has caused some bad blood between the state and some municipalities. Leaders in more than 20 municipalities have also joined a lawsuit seeking to overturn the new affordable housing law, as they say it will place unnecessary strain on their towns.

Assemblywoman Victoria Flynn (NJ-13) said the current method of calculating affordable housing quotas is a "logistical nightmare."

"There isn’t enough land in New Jersey to meet these development goals," the state lawmaker argued. "The state's electrical and water infrastructure cannot afford to absorb additional development. Our roads and bridges are in constant disrepair, and public transportation is insufficient or nearly non-existent in most of the state. The high-density development proposed will cause irreparable and irreversible harm to the environment."

Some advocates, including the Fair Share Housing Center, called the legal effort to derail the new law a “smokescreen,” and said it will likely be thrown out of court.

Sacks' outlook on the matter is based on Mercer County's previous lawsuit on the fair share methodology.

"Mercer County was involved in an extended legal challenge to the Fair Share methodology in Round 3. This led to the Jacobson Methodology that was incorporated into the new legislation governing Round 4," Sacks said.

"I anticipate that towns in Mercer County will now find it most productive to focus their time, effort, and financial resources, on good planning to meet their obligation in a way that makes sense for their communities."

AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN NEW JERSEY

When Gov. Phil Murphy signed the new law last year, he gave some background about what led to its creation. He wrote:

“Affordable housing has been a central public policy challenge in New Jersey for nearly half a century. Forty-nine years ago, in a case brought by two local branches of the NAACP, the New Jersey Supreme Court held in a landmark ruling that every municipality must ‘make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing.’ The court went on to say that towns cannot stand in the way of opportunities for low- and moderate-income housing. This principle became known as the Mount Laurel doctrine. To this day, it is studied by law students and lawyers all across the nation.”

There have also been negative impacts from the Mount Laurel doctrine. Community activists have complained that real estate developers have been able to use the doctrine to file "Builders Remedy" lawsuits in order to build large, multi-family developments that may be in conflict with municipalities' master plans – setting up conflicts between local leaders and angry residents.

• See Related: Housing Proposed Near Forest In Several Essex County Towns
• See Related: Golf Course In North Jersey Will Be Turned Into Housing

The New Jersey Legislature later adopted the Fair Housing Act in 1984 and created the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) — a bipartisan agency of members representing different interest groups — in order to prevent courts from becoming the forum for resolving these land use issues.

“For decades, all three branches of government have wrestled with how to apply the principles of Mount Laurel in practice,” Murphy wrote last year.

“At times, our state Legislature has tried to address this issue. At other times, the process for determining affordable housing obligations was left to an executive branch agency. But more recently, over the last 10 years, this process has mainly played out in the courts, through litigation.”

The time for that is over, Murphy said.

With the signing of last year’s bill, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs is now running the numbers. Towns will have the freedom to come up with plans to meet those quotas. Municipalities can earn bonus credits for constructing affordable housing where it is needed most, such as transit hubs, or for providing housing for vulnerable populations like senior citizens.

The new process replaces the role previously played by the COAH, which has been “defunct” for over a decade and was formally abolished under the bill, the governor’s office said.

The law also bans regional contribution agreements — in which towns pay neighboring municipalities to bolster their affordable housing stock instead.

DCA Commissioner Jacquelyn Suárez said the new law gives New Jersey a unique opportunity to develop “missing middle” housing: options like townhouses, duplexes and other types of multi-family units.

These types of housing can “bridge the gap” between single-family homes and large apartment complexes, offering the diverse housing choices that New Jersey families need, Suárez said.

(With reporting from Eric Kiefer, Patch Staff)

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