Toms River Rejects NJ's Affordable Housing Numbers For Township

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Toms River has rejected New Jersey's affordable housing calculation for the town and offered its own calculations for its fair share in a resolution adopted Wednesday by the Township Council.

The state Department of Community Affairs released its calculations of affordable housing obligations in October, defining how many low- or moderate-income units each town will need to provide for the 2025-2035 timeframe.

Toms River's present need is 526 units and its prospective need is 670 units, according to the DCA. "Present need" refers to existing housing units deemed substandard/deficient and in need of repair, and "prospective need" estimates the number of new units that will be needed based on population trends.

Mayor Daniel Rodrick said the town hired Rick Hunt, a planner with Alaimo Group, to review the calculations. Hunt identified several pieces of land that had been incorrectly categorized as open space that could be used for affordable housing. That reduced the number to 450 units, a number Rodrick called ridiculous, saying Toms River does not have the available land to accommodate that many units.

An article in ShoreBeat on Lavallette's affordable housing response to the state said that borough was able to get its quota reduced by showing that a number of the units the DCA was counting as new construction were homes replacing ones destroyed in Superstorm Sandy. Lavallette's attorney, Michelle Donato, argued that those lots would not have been considered as part of the state’s formula because they had always had homes on them, the report said.

Taking Sandy properties into account, Rodrick said Toms River is submitting a calculation of 114 units of low- and moderate-income housing needed by 2035.

He said it is possible Toms River will not need to build that many as it was adding 1,280 units from the third round of quotas. That exceeds what is supposed to be a 1,000-unit maximum per town, Rodrick said, and as a result he anticipates Toms River could receive credit for those in the fourth round. Some of those units are accounted for in projects that are currently under construction.

All towns are constitutionally mandated to provide their "fair share" of affordable housing for the region, under the Mount Laurel Doctrine, which dates back to 1975.

Towns had until Friday to approve the DCA quotas or submit their own calculations, and have until June 1 to come up with plans to meet the quotas. In most cases towns require developers to include low- and moderate-income units in their real estate development proposals.

Low-income households are defined as those with earnings at or below 50 percent of county median family income. Moderate-income households earn between 50 and 80 percent of the median family income, according to DCA.

In Ocean County, the median household income is $85,464, according to Census Reporter, an independent organization that collates the U.S. Census Bureau information.

"This resolution is a sound rejection of Trenton's efforts (to remove) local control," Council President Justin Lamb said.

"This is all being pushed by bleeding heart social engineers like Democrat Assemblyman Troy Singleton and the lobbying efforts of the Fair Housing Center, a group of sniveling, race-baiting Ivy League Democrats from Trenton who want to tell Toms River that we're not fulfilling our obligations but we're certainly not going to allow that," Lamb said.

Councilman Jim Quinlisk voted in favor of the resolution on the grounds that "the state should not be ramming down these numbers down our throat."

"The requirements that they're asking of us are a lot," Quinlisk said. He added that the township has "a responsibility to take care of those less fortunate, so I accept that we're going to have some of these units," adding that affordable housing is particularly needed by seniors in the community and single mothers.

According to U.S. Census figures from 2023, there were 99,090 residents in Toms River, 75 percent of whom (74,317) were white. There were approximately 24,795 families, including 20,166 white families. Of those families, 5.8 percent (1,169) live in poverty. Single white women account for 3,177 households in Toms River, and 9.7 percent of those (308) live in poverty.

The Census did not have specific figures for other races because "there were an insufficient number of sample cases" to calculate the numbers.

Toms River had 7,397 households of residents age 65 or older, and of those, 7.3 percent (540) were living in poverty. That includes 1,126 women, 16.7 percent of whom — 190 — had household incomes less than 50 percent of the county's median family income.

With reporting by Michelle Rotuno-Johnson, Patch Staff