Seven low income housing units are planned for the Chestnut Avenue development that was just approved. How the heck does Ridgewood make any sort of real dent in its preposterous court-imposed low income housing deficit, seven units at a time?
Judicial fiat in any area of life over a time span measured in decades is utter lunacy. In this case it constitutes a naked denial to New Jersey citizens of their right under the U.S. Constitution to a republican (small ‘r’) form of government. The Municipal Law course at Rutgers Newark offered at the turn of the millenium featured a hands-upturned, shoulders-shrugged admission of all of the above by the part-time prof and active municipal law practitioner (who, of course, supported the system despite its unconstitutionality, but why? Because the prof was a reliablly progressive statist drone who agreed with the POLICY!).
The issue of affordable housing is based on a NJ Supreme Court decision over 10 years ago that requires EVERY municipality in the state to provide affordable housing in their community. The towns then essentially passed that burden along to developers who wished to build new housing units in their community by requiring that a percentage of the new units be dedicated to affordable housing. Nonetheless the legal obligation to provide affordable housing ultimately rests with the municipality and not developers..
It doesn’t. The way the ‘settlement’ has been structured, it never will.The settlement isn’t designed to address low income housing availability. It is designed as a club developers can hold over the heads of affluent communities. No prizes for guessing who the driving force behind the settlement was.
If they REALLY cared about affordable housing, they would insist that developers build 100% affordable housing, instead of giving ‘credit’ for a few units in a giant multifamily building. But there the $$$$$ are just not there for developing pure affordable housing, you see!
The part I can’t understand is that to get the seven we have to get a lot more of the “non-low-income” kind, thereby increasing the proportion of those. At that rate, the more affordable units we build, the farther behind we’ll get. By the way, Aronsohn promised the disabled community that he would make sure appropriate housing became available. Why isn’t his name invoked when complaints are made that Ridgewood needs this? No–instead, he’s thanked.
That was the fallacy and lunacy of the Mayor Arohnson approach – – the last council approved close to 400 new family units downtown with only a small percentage addressing our coah requirements. But, the new council does not seem any more intent on doing what we need to do in a rationale manner. Now we have these new units going forward, our schools and other village services will be innundated with new people and we still have the problem we had before — where do we put hundreds of new coah units??
Current council would love to rectify this but their hands are tied legally because so much was approved before they started. Sad state of affairs.
Why would a private developer build 100% low and moderate income income housing if their cost to build exceeds their projected revenue from the project.? The NJ State Supreme court has ruled on the issue of affordable housing and EVERY municipality must comply, so the choice for the Village is to either build it themselves in which case the existing taxpayers end up footing the entire bill or they can offer an incentive to private developers via a reasonable “set-aside” for an affordable housing component in their proposed development. So the choice is simple, the residents can either pay for the whole thing themselves or they can partially subsidize someone who will. DUH !!
1102 thats absolutely untrue. their hands are not tied. They could take a more active approach and should do so now before the developers continue to walk all over our town.