“Courts forcing development on communities that are built out and on environmentally sensitive lands full of threatened and endangered species is really developers owning certain politicians and courts. When re development is used to pave over perfectly good farm ground rather than re build the cities that these laws were suppose to address , you know corruption for profit is a lot of what this game is about. Affordable housing is a noble thing to do but force feeding it into places it does not belong shows the graft and favors being passed out.”
Englewood Cliffs NJ, Englewood Cliffs is required to build hundreds of new homes affordable to working families and people with disabilities – after violating the state’s fair housing laws for decades, a Superior Court judge has ruled.
The decision by Bergen County Superior Court Judge Christine A. Farrington requires borough officials to provide a plan within 90 days to build 347 homes to satisfy the town’s fair housing obligations under the Mount Laurel doctrine – or be stripped of all zoning powers.
River Vale NJ, In this interview the founder of Fair Share Housing stares that municipalities aren’t being forced to allow builders to build 5 market rate units for an affordable unit and that the narrative is “totally false.” For my friends around the State facing lawsuits from builders and Fair Share, are his claims accurate?
“Municipalities that don’t want to do their fair share claim that they’ll have to do five units for every affordable unit,” said Fair Share Housing Center Founder Peter O’Connor. “So, if their fair share were 200, they’d have to do 1,000 units. If it were 500, they have to do 2,500 units. That is totally false. The Supreme Court has given great deference to municipal decision making. And towns have a laundry list of 10 categories they can choose from to implement fair share. Only one is the development of market rate housing.”
NJ’s affordable housing crisis: how are towns meeting demand?
BY Briana Vannozzi, Correspondent | August 30, 2017, 3PM EST
The State Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel decision on affordable housing has confounded municipalities and complicated urban planning since it was handed down. There is still widespread dispute over the number of homes each municipality is required to provide. In the meantime, towns are finding creative solutions for those still Chasing the Dream. In the final part of our series, Correspondent Briana Vannozzi went to Mount Laurel where it all began.
Fair Share Housing Center’s Rev. Eric Dobson showed NJTV News cameras a newly constructed road to see the latest housing development inside the original Ethel Lawrence neighborhood of Mount Laurel. The affordable units of single family and town homes will be ready within a year.
“Many aren’t aware this affordable housing facility exists. So it seamlessly integrated into the town,” said Dobson.
River Vale NJ , Assemblywomen Holly Schepisi asks, “If the Democratic front runner for Governor boldly says NJ won’t comply with many federal laws he disagrees with, why can’t our suburban communities fight back against ridiculous NJ policies that the democratic controlled legislature refuses to change?”
Schepisi said she hopes to force change by guiding a movement of civil disobedience.
“We need more voices to be heard,” said Schepisi, an attorney. “No one I’ve spoken to is against affordable housing — everyone supports the idea,” she added. “What everyone objects to is high-density complexes thrust on small communities.”
Schepisi proposed legislation to impose a moratorium on lawsuits related to affordable housing and form a bipartisan commission to calculate the number of units needed to serve the state. Those bills have stalled.
My hat goes off to her but she seems to be lonely in this fight. I don’t see any uproar from anybody else on the Republican side at least. Democ-rats agenda will continue the path of destruction in the name of socialism. Socialism tries to narrow the gap by destroying the rich so they can come come closer to the poor levels instead of trying to bring up the poor and increase their standards. In the end Bergen County and Ridgewood in particular will suffer terribly. We live in times of sadomasochism. These libs don’t care that even their living standards will go down and that of their children as long as their brain is happy with bringing “equality” to the world.
I represent many communities in Bergen and Passaic counties that had significant flooding this week because of the torrential rains. The flooding episodes have become frequent and severe over the past two decades, primarily because there is no place left for groundwater from storms to be absorbed. Guess what isn’t taken into account in current mandated overdevelopment in NJ? Flooding. So towns like Westwood and Hillsdale, Wanaque and Ringwood and Mahwah and Oakland are being forced to build significantly more units of housing under “affordable housing” lawsuits as these same communities are spending millions of dollars to acquire flood prone properties and return them to their natural state to prevent flooding. We need to stop this insanity. Call every Bergen and Passaic County legislator and demand they take action to preserve our communities. #saveourenvironment
