Affordable Housing Legislation Would Force Scotch Plains and Fanwood to Build More Than 900 Units

Even as it awaits the Governor’s veto pen, a bill abolishing New Jersey’s Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and revamping the state’s affordable housing laws has Scotch Plains and Fanwood officials evaluating the measure’s short- and long-term impact.

The bill (S1) originally cleared the State Senate in June on a 28-3 vote. On Monday, however, the State Assembly passed an amended version of S1 on a 45-32 vote split across party lines. 

Gov. Chris Christie indicated through a spokesman that he was unsatisfied with the revisions, according to a report on NJ.com, the website for The Star-Ledger. Fanwood Borough Attorney Dennis Estis was more blunt. “There’s not a chance in the world that the governor’s signing that bill,” he predicted, meaning that S1 is headed for a likely veto.

Both the Senate and Assembly found common ground in their decision to abolish COAH, an often-maligned government organization created in 1985 to enforce affordable housing law.

According to Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood), who voted in favor of S1 on Monday, “Affordable housing under COAH has been a nightmare since I was mayor of Fanwood in 1992. [COAH’s] formulas were complicated and virtually not understandable.”

Where the State Senate and Assembly’s bills differed, however, was in their treatment of affordable housing quotas.

Currently, a number of municipalities comply with COAH by purchasing affordable units for other New Jersey municipalities as a kind of contribution. These contributions, known as Regional Contribution Agreements (RCAs), allow municipalities to comply with the law without building within their own borders. 

According to Scotch Plains Township Attorney Jeffrey Lehrer, for example, under COAH Scotch Plains had paid for 175 affordable housing units – not in the township itself, where only 115 affordable housing units currently exist, but in Linden.

The Assembly’s version of S1 would not recognize RCAs like that of Scotch Plains. Instead, it would demand that affordable unit housing quotas that be completed within ten-year cycles, and that units be built entirely within the municipalities themselves. In other words, it would be as though Scotch Plains had never purchased those 175 units.

Mayors from both Scotch Plains and Fanwood voiced their concerns about the strict quotas imposed by the ten-year cycles. Over the course of the three compliance periods, it is estimated Scotch Plains will need to build over 750 new affordable housing units, while Fanwood will have to construct an over 200 new housing units, according to numbers released by the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Organization.

“What that would result in,” Scotch Plains Mayor Nancy Malool said in a telephone interview, “is taking whatever open spaces we have left and converting them to apartment units.” She later added, “S1 places such a burden on suburban municipalities like ours. S1 is not realistic for a town like ours.”

Fanwood Mayor Colleen Mahr expressed similar concerns. “We are considered what they call a built-up community,” she said. “We’re not a community that could build several hundred of anything. It’s an unrealistic number to plan for."

A particular concern for both municipalities is the second and third ten-year cycle, in which affordable housing construction would be almost double what it was in the first ten years.

Assemblywoman Linda Stender, who voted in favor of the legislation, insists that municipalities should look to the first cycle rather than down the road: “The framework that’s put in place has given those towns the methodology to plan for the next ten years in a way that could be reasonably attained,” she argued. In her view, the New Jersey legislature came up with the best constitutional solution to the problem at hand.

The New Jersey League of Municipalities, of which Scotch Plains and Fanwood are members, has called on the governor to veto the bill. “We are unable to support this bill, in its current form, due to the obligations it would impose on municipalities,” the league asserted in a statement published Jan. 11.

As municipalities across the state continue to figure out those obligations under the revised affordable housing laws, they keep an ear to Trenton to see whether Christie will veto the law.

“Everybody’s kind of out in limbo,” Malool said.

This article was revised Jan. 21 to reflect the following correction:

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Assemblywoman Linda Stender as Stander.