the staff of the Ridgewood blog
River Vale NJ, Holly Schepisi New Jersey State Assemblywoman for District 39 ,Currently, New Jersey has a total of 391,428 vacant housing units, according to Census data, with the highest concentration in Newark. These numbers are staggering particularly as we build hundreds of thousands additional units of court imposed housing in New Jersey. Why aren’t we converting even a fraction of these homes into affordable housing rather than building on every last remaining parcel? What is wrong with this State?
There is once again a push for the state of New Jersey would buy up foreclosed homes and turn them into affordable housing to address two long-standing problems in the state.With the number of bank-owned homes in the state reaching an 11-year high of 23,322 last year, lawmakers are again pushing to put in place a program to repurpose foreclosed housing.
The Senate Economic Growth Committee voted 4-0 to release the “New Jersey Residential Foreclosure Transformation Act” (S-1584), which would create a temporary entity within the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency to use bonds and other funds to buy foreclosed houses from banks. The New Jersey Foreclosure Relief Corporation would then within 60 days sell or lease them to municipalities, developers or community development corporations for use as affordable housing, with the municipality in which the house is located getting the right of first refusal.
“Why aren’t we converting even a fraction of these homes into affordable housing rather than building on every last remaining parcel? “
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Because if we did that, how would we be able to punish the evil rich folk???
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