The Mount Laurel decision , the Developers and Lawyers Full Employment Act

October 26,2017

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, professional planner Beth McManus spoke at the Ridgewood Council meeting Wednesday night to clarify where the Village stands in regards to Affordable Housing . Beth has experience and expertise in the Affordable Housing arena . The Village has voluntary engaged in the process of Affordable Housing with the incentive of being immune from a builders remedy ,which often results in oversized high density developments being forced on the town and the tax payers .

The Mount Laurel decision found that New Jersey municipalities have a constitutional obligation to provide housing for households of all incomes in their community , since 1990 Ridgewood is in a better positions to meet it housing obligations do to proactive policies .

Fair Share Housing (FSHC) a party to the state supreme court decision and a party to every single case in the state , basically Fair Share Housing  has to sign off on all Affordable Housing settlements . Fair Share Housing Center (FSHC), founded in 1975, is the only public interest organization entirely devoted to defending the housing rights of New Jersey’s poor through enforcement of the Mount Laurel Doctrine, the landmark decision that prohibits economic discrimination through exclusionary zoning and requires all towns to provide their “fair share” of their region’s need for affordable housing.

Affordable Housing in New Jersey is available for people with incomes from around $50 to as high as $86,000.

The Mount Laurel decision and doctrine seem nothing more than another socialist redistribution of wealth through property. The Mount Laurel decision and doctrine should be more aptly called the “developers full employment act ” and the” lawyers get rich act .”

In essence towns are forced to build affordable housing as a percentage of new construction . Developers can only make money by allocating a small percentage of the development to affordable housing. Thus 1000 new units built would equal at most 100 affordable housing units at most . Meaning massive developments would have to be built to meet these obligations , changing the character and quality of life in most of Bergen county de facto turning the county into the 6th borough of New York City in density.

The Mount Laurel decision also fails to rectify the housing obligations with a declining New Jersey population , New Jersey is still the best place to move from in the USA and recent census shows a decline of over 30,000 in population . It also fails to remedy the impact on the current real-estate market of swamping communities with massive affordable housing projects . Mount Laurel  also leaves the New Jersey taxpayer with undue burden forcing even more residents to flee the state . Taxes will continue there upward spiral due  the high cost of implementing Mount Laurel and all the additional burdens  of building up infrastructure , roads, schools, water, gas and so on all coming out of the taxpayers pocket.