New Jersey Future Blog
Two Homes, One Roof: Making NJ More Welcoming with ADUs
June 25th, 2021 by Tim Evans
Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are an often overlooked and underutilized solution to the affordable housing shortage we face in New Jersey and across the Northeast. An ADU can be built as a separate dwelling unit in the backyard of a detached home on a single-family lot, or can be created from existing space by converting a garage, basement, or attic, or can be built as a self-contained addition onto an existing single-family home.
At the 2021 New Jersey Planning & Redevelopment Conference, co-hosted by New Jersey Future and the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association, a session entitled Two Homes, One Roof: Making NJ More Welcoming with ADUs discussed the importance of ADUs and their potential as a strategy for increasing the state’s housing options. Speakers included Nat Bottigheimer, New Jersey Director of the Regional Plan Association, Dean Dafis, Deputy Mayor of Maplewood Township, Christine Newman, Director of Community Outreach at AARP New Jersey, Mia Sacks, Councilwoman for the Municipality of Princeton, and Julia Stoumbos, Director of the “Aging in Place” program at the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation.
Nat Bottigheimer talked about the Regional Plan Association’s July 2020 report Be My Neighbor, which outlined strategies to create more homes and emphasized how valuable ADUs can be for seniors who want to age in place, families who’d like to earn extra income from their home, and anyone who cannot afford a single-family home. Julia Stoumbos seconded the point about seniors, noting how ADUs can help solve many of the challenges that confront people seeking to remain in their community as they age. “The prohibitive cost of maintaining a home is one of the most commonly mentioned challenges in surveys of older people,” she said. Moving into an ADU reduces the responsibilities for maintenance, and also reduces or eliminates the need to pay property taxes, which Stoumbos cited as another frequent obstacle to aging in place for older people no longer earning a steady income.
Christine Newman talked about the surging growth in the 65+ population, as the Baby Boomers age into retirement, and the need for housing markets to adjust to this reality. Adults living alone (including a substantial number of older people) now account for 30% of all households, but Newman observed that “housing markets remain fixated on the ‘nuclear family’ household and the single-family-detached house. We need to expand our imagination, in terms of the types of housing units we build.” She said we need to rediscover how to include ADUs in our housing stock, along with many other types of “missing middle” housing that were common up through the 1940s.
A major obstacle to ADUs is that local zoning often does not allow them. How do we change that? Maplewood and Princeton have each made progress promoting diverse and inclusive housing, and Mia Sacks and Dean Dafis each talked about how they shifted public opinion in favor of needed zoning changes in their respective towns. Both local leaders observed that the best way to sell ADUs to the public is to describe them as a way to help older residents age in place. Sacks said she even used her own mother as an example of how ADUs can enable seniors to continue paying their property taxes. Newman echoed the importance of getting local residents to tell their stories, saying that “personal stories are key for community engagement and buy-in, especially when it comes to NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard). They reframe the conversation from ‘they/them’ to ‘us/we’.”
For towns that are open to allowing ADUs, Newman said that AARP has a model local ordinance that towns can use as a guide. As another resource for building support for such an ordinance, she also pointed to AARP’s 2019 report The ABCs of ADUs, which provides a primer for communities interested in better understanding how ADUs support Age-Friendly Community Building.
But Dafis said municipal leaders need state laws to support their efforts to make ADUs available to everybody who needs them. The panelists agreed that they wished public sentiment were more open to offering opportunities to the many kinds of people that could benefit from living in an ADU, not just older people who already live in town. Dafis said a major challenge is overcoming existing residents’ stated concerns about “changing the character of the community,” language he said harkens back to the country’s ugly history of redlining, in terms of using housing laws to keep out certain kinds of people. Bottigheimer commented that Connecticut recently passed a law that bans the use of “character” in local land-use ordinances unless the town can quantify what it means by that term. A similar bill in New Jersey that permitted ADUs “as of right” might help to undo the state’s status as one of the most segregated in the country.
Geography of Equity and Inclusion: The Big Picture
June 24th, 2021 by Bailey Lawrence
Spatial segregation persists across the United States and continues to result in economic, educational, and health disparities. Nonetheless, according to several planning professionals and activists, equitable approaches, processes, and strategies can help mitigate spatial segregation in New Jersey. At the 2021 New Jersey Planning and Redevelopment Conference, the Geography of Equity and Inclusion: The Big Picture plenary session featured five panelists, including Smart Growth America President and CEO Calvin Gladney, Latino Action Network President Christian Estevez, Fair Share Housing Center Deputy Director Eric Dobson, Tri-State Transportation Campaign Executive Director Renae Reynolds, and David Troutt, Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality and Metropolitan Equity (CLiME), Rutgers University. The panel was moderated by New Jersey Future Executive Director Peter Kasabach, and opening remarks were delivered by New Jersey Future Board Members: Cooper’s Ferry Partnership Vice President Meishka Mitchell, AICP, PP, City of Hoboken Director of Community Development Christopher Brown, and Maraziti Falcon LLP Partner Joseph Maraziti.
The speakers provided an overview of spatial segregation in New Jersey, while analyzing the origins of these disparities.
“New Jersey is one of the most diverse states, but it is also one of the most segregated states,” Dobson said. In fact, according to Gladney, “we are getting more segregated year after year” in New Jersey and across the country.
Gladney emphasized that spatial segregation was deliberately established and continues to be purposefully maintained. “It’s not a bug in the system,” Gladney said. “It’s a feature of the system to churn out inequity.” These features include single-family zoning, interstate highways, and redlining.
Such planning decisions, according to Reynolds, have “left communities bifurcated by highways and suffocated by the pollution that comes from the transportation sector.”
Troutt said that, as professionals in the planning field, we must study and act upon these instances of institutional harm, rather than merely acknowledging them in passing. For example, Brown explained that Hoboken’s Master Plan considered how the city’s zoning has motivated the proliferation of larger and more expensive dwellings.
Spatial segregation has important implications for opportunities and health outcomes, and its manifestations may appear in virtually every facet of New Jerseyans’ daily lives.
“Where you live and where you were born can dictate your access to open space, clean drinking water,” and other life necessities, Mitchell said.
During his keynote presentation, Gladney explained that low-income units are being built increasingly further away from transit access across the country, and New Jersey is especially reflective of this trend. On the other hand, the walkability of poor New Jersey neighborhoods is much greater than that of other states’ poorer neighborhoods.
Furthermore, Gladney demonstrated that, in many cities in the United States, the hottest areas are located in the poorest neighborhoods. In many cases, these are the same neighborhoods that were redlined nearly a century ago. Climate change and rising temperatures will disproportionately impact these neighborhoods, which did not receive sufficient investments in the form of tree canopies and porous and/or reflective pavement. Communities most vulnerable to increasing flooding are disportionately the homes of poorer people, as well, Gladney said.
However, the speakers described ongoing initiatives that seek to inhibit spatial segregation and prescribed tactics that conference attendees can utilize in their own communities.
For example, Maraziti emphasized the importance of negotiating community benefits agreements, which can help foster more equitable neighborhoods.
In terms of the transportation sector, Reynolds discussed the Tri-State Transportation Campaign’s efforts to expand the times of transit service, increase access to New Jersey’s trails, and generate connections from “rails to trails.”
“The pandemic brought to light the need for more access to green space,” Reynolds said.
The speakers also outlined strategies in the housing realm that may help combat spatial segregation. Dobson urged urban jurisdictions—especially cities in which gentrification is an intensifying threat—to more consciously implement inclusionary zoning. In Hoboken, for example, the City is adjusting the zoning code to promote housing diversity and affordability, Brown said.
Nonetheless, both Dobson and Estevez acknowledged that it will take decades to truly achieve residential desegregation. Estevez said that, in the meantime, communities must work to expand access to equitable education. Through its ongoing legal efforts, the Latino Action Network is attempting to “realize the promise of Brown” and produce “[really] integrated schools, and then hopefully housing that follows.”
Many of the speakers acknowledged this historical moment as a unique opportunity to effect substantive change and provided effective strategies to conceptualize and evaluate equity.
During this “age of equity,” said Troutt, we must “recognize that the Mt. Laurel doctrine is really about affirmative aspirations. It’s not just about the least that we can do, but the most that we can think about doing.” In order to achieve equitable outcomes, analysis must help formulate “specific equity targets,” and practitioners must engage in “serious compliance, reconciliation, and accountability,” Troutt said.
“We have to make decisions [and] investments with equity in mind” and “centering racially equitable outcomes and fixing racial disparities as the core” of decision-making, Gladney said.
Water, Water Everywhere—Achilles Heel or Asset?
June 24th, 2021 by Missy Rebovich
Water is essential for life, but the infrastructure that brings it into our homes—or keeps it out of our basements—is only considered when something goes wrong. At the 2021 New Jersey Planning & Redevelopment Conference session Water, Water Everywhere—Achilles Heel or Asset? panelists discussed why water can no longer be treated as an add-on issue to which communities simply react. Moderated by Chris Sturm, managing director, policy and water at New Jersey Future, the session featured George Hawkins, founder and CEO of Moonshot Missions; Jennifer Gonzales, director of environmental services, City of Hoboken; Meishka Mitchell, vice president, Cooper’s Ferry Partnership; and Lisa J. Plevin, executive director, New Jersey Highlands Council.
One way to infuse consideration of water into planning and decision-making is by local ordinance. Hawkins explained how Washington, D.C. changed its development and redevelopment ordinance to highlight stormwater capture in response to increasing flooding during rainstorms. “This started 10 years ago and has gotten stronger over time. You must capture in a new project or a redevelopment project 1.2 inches of rainfall on site. That’s required to get your permit to do the redevelopment. But flexibility is built in, so if you can’t do it on-site, there’s a mitigation bank, like a wetland mitigation bank, but for green infrastructure.”
Developers encountering site constraints to green infrastructure can pay into the fund, which allows the District Department of Environment to construct green infrastructure elsewhere with the same criteria. The bank creates a marketplace to ensure green infrastructure is generated by all new development.
In the New Jersey Highlands, municipalities are required by state law to update their master plans in conformance with the Highlands regional master plan. “Protecting water resources in the Highlands region is critical,” said Plevin. “Because, while the region makes up less than 20% of the population of our state, it is the source of drinking water for over 70% of the state’s residents.”
Plevin noted that “clean, plentiful water is really important; however, municipalities are often focused on their own local boundaries and not on watershed boundaries.” That’s why the New Jersey Highlands Council works closely with the region’s municipalities and counties to ensure local plans are developed in ways that maximize water resource protection.
In Hoboken, an urban coastal city with a combined sewer system, local leadership is acutely aware of the importance of stormwater management. In order to leverage capital, Gonzalez explained, the City looks to multi-benefit projects. For example, Hoboken’s Washington Street Redesign project—which won a New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award in 2020—involved replacing drinking water infrastructure across 15 blocks of the city. This work allowed the City to install complete streets upgrades at the same time, installing four green/gray infrastructure projects involving porous pavement and underground detention basins in the public right-of-way.
“We employ a One Water approach where we can manage drinking water and manage stormwater all through one capital plan,” said Gonzalez.
Community organizations—and community members, themselves—play an important role in connecting water issues to city planning. Camden’s century-old combined sewer system has received lots of attention from residents experiencing frequent contaminated flooding. Mitchell explained, “In the early 2000s, Cooper’s Ferry Partnership began to think about planning and redevelopment on a neighborhood scale. It was when we started to do more neighborhood-driven community outreach that we began to really understand the impact water was having in the city and how we needed to address it.”
As much as the residents learned about water infrastructure, Mitchell says she learned more from the residents. Community members addressed local flooding as their number one issue, which helped the local government see its impact, including on a young student who expressed concern that her school bus wouldn’t be able to make it to take her to school during a rain event. “Water infrastructure, whether combined sewer flooding, lead pipes, or water quality, impacts residents far more significantly than those in government could imagine. Until we talk to those residents, we won’t get a full understanding of what that means” Mitchell said.
Cooper’s Ferry Partnership has been working with the City of Camden to incorporate green infrastructure into everything it can—from art installations, to park development, to new building development—and making sure that water infrastructure is part of the planning process, keeping residents front and center.
Panelists noted that funding can be a significant barrier to implementing green infrastructure and other water infrastructure projects. In Camden, Mitchell found that her nonprofit organization and the City, working collaboratively and creatively, can leverage each other’s resources to move critical projects forward. Hawkins shared that D.C. implemented a stormwater utility to fund stormwater infrastructure upgrades, and Hoboken is investigating how it can do the same.
Keeping water at the forefront of planning is key to the health of our communities. By working together, government leaders, utilities, community groups and members can develop and implement plans that will make our cities and towns strong and resilient for centuries to come while protecting our most valuable natural resource: water.
Incorporating Climate Change: It’s the Law
June 24th, 2021 by Tim Evans
Earlier this year the legislature passed and the governor signed into law an amendment to the New Jersey Municipal Land Use Law (MLUL) requiring a climate change-related hazard vulnerability assessment.
What does this change mean for municipal officials? What will they be required to do and when? This was the topic of discussion in a session entitled Incorporating Climate Change: It’s the Law at the 2021 New Jersey Planning & Redevelopment Conference, co-hosted by New Jersey Future and the New Jersey Chapter of the American Planning Association.
Moderated by Leah Yasenchak, Principal at BRS, Inc., the panel included Jon Drill of Stickel, Koenig, Sullivan & Drill, LLC; Jessica Jahre, Senior Planner at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP); Anthony Mercantante, Township Administrator of Middletown Township; and Stan Slachetka, Group Manager at T&M Associates.
Jon Drill pointed out that the MLUL amendment falls under the section that lays out the required elements of a municipal land-use plan. The preparation of a climate change and hazard vulnerability assessment is thus triggered by any update of the land-use plan. Since many municipalities are going to have to update their master plans in order to satisfy their affordable housing requirements, they will also have to look at completing these vulnerability assessments as part of that process.
As to what needs to be in the assessment, Stan Slachetka mentioned that some municipalities have more climate-change-related vulnerabilities than others. Coastal municipalities are at special risk from sea-level rise, but all municipalities will be affected in some way, whether from increased temperatures, storm intensity, increased rainfall and stormwater runoff, fire risk, etc. Slachetka said probably the best way to think about a climate risk assessment is through the lens of a build-out analysis, in which a municipality considers what land uses would be located in vulnerable areas if everything called for in the master plan got built. If a town’s master plan and zoning are calling for development in areas that will be flood-prone in the future, for example, this should be a prompt to reexamine the zoning and redirect future development.
How do municipal leaders know what land uses are located in “vulnerable areas,” both now and in the future? Jessica Jahre announced that NJDEP has created a website, Resilient NJ, to help municipalities plan for climate change. She said its primary objective is “to accelerate community resilience planning,” and that “there is something in there that will be of interest to every town.” In particular, the website includes a toolkit designed to walk municipal leaders through the process of identifying their areas of vulnerability to climate change. The toolkit not only helps municipal leaders assess their risks but also contains a database of over 300 local actions that could be taken to address those risks, along with case studies, allowing municipalities to tailor their responses to their particular situations.
Slachetka suggested that municipalities should use these tools to ask what is their level of risk on various factors, what areas are affected, what is located there, and who lives there. He advised municipal leaders to look especially at “critical facilities” (e.g., utility lines, roads, public buildings) that are located in vulnerable areas and to identify which elements of the land-use plan potentially need to be updated to address these locational vulnerabilities.
Anthony Mercantante talked about the unusual situation in Middletown Township, which comprises numerous component neighborhoods with a diverse array of demographics. In contrast to the pattern typical of most coastal municipalities, Middletown’s neighborhoods along the Raritan bayshore (North Middletown, Port Monmouth, Belford, and Leonardo) actually have lower average home values than the inland neighborhoods, reflecting the generally lower-income profile of the residents. One of these neighborhoods, Port Monmouth, has recently been protected by a flood control project funded by the Army Corps of Engineers, involving flood walls, flood gates, and pumps. The design of the project had been on the Army Corps’s books since the 1990s, but it only actually got built in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. Mercantante indicated that these physical reinforcements are effective – North Middletown already had flood walls and did not flood during Sandy. But the infrastructure is expensive, sometimes involving land acquisition.
Infrastructure projects like the one in Port Monmouth are also reactive. The MLUL amendment is designed to instead encourage local governments to think proactively, the better to get residents and critical facilities out of harm’s way before the next disaster strikes.
Tracking Progress on Environmental Justice
June 15th, 2021 by Tim Evans
The Murphy administration has made environmental justice a priority, pledging to end the siting of environmental hazards in neighborhoods where low-income people and/or people of color live—and especially neighborhoods that are characterized by the presence of both low-income households and people of color. In September 2020 the Environmental Justice Law was passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Murphy to protect disadvantaged communities from further exposure to environmentally hazardous land uses.
The law defines “overburdened communities,” which will benefit from the new protections. An overburdened community is any census block group in which any of the following conditions is met:
- at least 35 percent of households qualify as low-income households (at or below twice the poverty threshold, as determined by the United States Census Bureau); or
- at least 40 percent of residents identify as minority or as members of a State-recognized tribal community; or
- at least 40 percent of households have limited English proficiency (without an adult that speaks English “very well,” according to the United States Census Bureau).
The law is written to address the question of where not to locate certain types of facilities in the future. However, the administration has also indicated that it will prioritize the improvement of environmental conditions in overburdened communities when making decisions about where to invest in clean energy and other technologies designed to reduce the state’s carbon footprint, many of which will result in reductions in traditional pollutants, as well. The administration seems to want to use the newly defined concept of an overburdened community in a more proactive sense, rather than an exclusively reactive one.
One of the first situations in which this commitment will be tested is in the spending of proceeds from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) program. Participating states are required to use the proceeds from CO2 allowance auctions for programs that are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the use of clean energy sources, but it is up to each state to decide exactly where (geographically) this money will be spent. In theory, there is nothing to stop a state from spending its RGGI money mainly on charging stations for electric vehicles in upscale suburbs, for example, which would do nothing to improve conditions in the communities that have historically suffered the most severe pollution impacts. But, New Jersey has already taken steps to assure the public that this will not happen.
The NJ Department of Environmental Protection, which is coordinating efforts among the three state agencies1 charged with spending RGGI proceeds, has set up a RGGI Climate Investments Dashboard, where information about projects receiving RGGI funding will be made publicly available. To date, 19 projects have been added to the dashboard, all of which involve electrified municipal vehicles of various types (garbage trucks, shuttle buses, school buses, etc.). As more programs are finalized and application periods close, information about the awardees will be added.
The dashboard allows projects to be filtered and displayed according to various subsetting criteria, one of which is whether the project is located in an environmental justice (EJ) community. The overburdened community block groups are also illustrated on a map on the dashboard, and users can examine the locations of funded projects with respect to EJ community boundaries. Thus far, all projects have been tagged with the EJ flag because, in each case, the electric vehicle will be operating in a municipality that contains at least one EJ block group. However, the assignment of EJ status for mobile projects is not as straightforward as is the case for projects having a fixed location, in which case a building or other permanent facility is clearly either inside or outside an EJ block group. Electric vehicles, by contrast, may only spend part of their time in EJ block groups.
The development of tracking metrics is an ongoing process. New metrics may be added to the dashboard in the future, and others that do not lend themselves to graphic display may be tracked behind the scenes. In particular, if a methodology can be developed to distinguish the uses and benefits of non-stationary projects, such as electric vehicles, between EJ and non-EJ areas, New Jersey Future will continue to encourage state agencies to officially adopt such metrics and make results public. More generally, we will continue to provide feedback on proposed metrics for tracking progress on environmental justice as more RGGI-funded programs gear up and are added to the dashboard. As the dashboard user manual says, “The public needs to know how administering agencies are investing RGGI proceeds and what benefits are being achieved from those investments.”
While these investments are taking place, the State is contemplating joining the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI). TCI is similar to RGGI but with a focus on the transportation sector. TCI discourages fossil fuel consumption in the transportation sector while generating funds that can be invested in cleaning the transportation sector, such as investments in alternatives to driving. Having good metrics and a tracking system in place, as they are doing with RGGI, will put the State in a good position to invest TCI proceeds wisely should they come to pass.
1 The Board of Public Utilities and the Economic Development Authority are the other two agencies.
All Boats Rise: Investing in Climate Resilience & Communities
June 15th, 2021 by Missy Rebovich
The science is clear: climate change is here, and its threats are only going to grow more pronounced. But, carefully coordinated efforts can not only protect New Jerseyans from these threats, but can help spur economic activity, as well, making our state that much stronger. That was the message from four senior-level officials from Governor Murphy’s administration at the 2021 Planning and Redevelopment Conference, hosted by New Jersey Future and the NJ Chapter of the American Planning Association. New Jersey Economic Development Authority CEO Tim Sullivan, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Acting Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, New Jersey Board of Public Utilities President Joseph Fiordaliso, and New Jersey Office of Climate Action and the Green Economy Director Jane Cohen detailed how planning and redevelopment will play an important role in achieving Governor Murphy’s ambitious climate change goals at the All Boats Rise: Investing in Climate Resilience & Communities session moderated by Kathleen Ellis, New Jersey Future Board Chair.
It’s easy to think about the physical threats of climate change to our environment, such as sea level rise and the urban heat island effect, but climate change is also damaging the economic health of the state, Cohen explained. All of these forces are having a disproportionate impact on New Jersey’s vulnerable communities. That’s why Governor Murphy created the Office of Climate Action and the Green Economy, charged with addressing climate change, planning for a clean energy future, and transitioning to a green economy while prioritizing equity. Both this office and the NJ Council on the Green Economy are working to ensure close coordination between the State’s departments and agencies, many of which will play crucial roles in the design and implementation of climate change solutions. According to Cohen, “the purpose is to be intentional about how we transition to a green economy to make sure that the workforce development opportunities and economic opportunities are going to folks transitioning from traditional energy jobs into family-sustaining jobs in this new economy.”
Through the Office of Climate Action and the Green Economy and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), Governor Murphy recently released the New Jersey Climate Change Resilience Strategy, which lays out the Governor’s approach to climate change adaptation policy. LaTourette summarized the State’s larger policy as reducing pollution and responding to climate change, both of which can be addressed on parallel and complementary tracks. Of particular concern to the NJDEP is that New Jersey municipalities understand the importance of planning for the future and use forward-looking science to determine the areas that are unsuitable for development, either because they will be underwater or because people will not have a safe way out in a disaster. This can be achieved, according to LaTourette, through the State Planning Commission center designation process and by offering incentives only to developments that have carefully considered climate risks.
The coupling of a climate change strategy with an economic strategy represents a paradigm shift in how we think about climate change policy. Sullivan explained that the administration “reject[s] the false choice that is sometimes promulgated by others that you can pursue sustainability, an environmental strategy, and an energy strategy that is forward-thinking and progressive or you can grow your economy,” but not both. Sullivan is ensuring that the New Jersey Economic Development Authority’s investments are not going to developments that do not consider climate change—it’s a bad investment of taxpayer dollars. Sullivan sees New Jersey’s approach to climate change as presenting an enormous opportunity to grow our economy. Offshore wind, solar, and electric retrofits of developments will create a wealth of jobs at all levels.
These investments go beyond housing and businesses. Fiordaliso explained that New Jersey has invested $5 billion in infrastructure upgrades, maintenance, and mitigation projects since 2012, but more severe storms will continue to cause outages and wreak havoc on our infrastructure if we don’t do something to mitigate the impacts of climate change. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that the energy we use comes from clean sources. The Board of Public Utilities (BPU) is hard at work to get New Jersey to 100% clean energy by 2050, an undertaking that will protect our state while expanding the job market. Additionally, BPU has an office of clean energy equity to ensure that all communities in New Jersey have the opportunity to participate in what Fiordaliso calls “the clean energy revolution.”
The panelists all emphasized that successful implementation of the climate change resilience strategy relies on close collaboration and a strong focus on equity and environmental justice. New Jersey Future will continue to offer input regarding the strategies and plans and looks forward to their implementation.
New Jersey Future and Partners Launch Lead-Free NJ
June 15th, 2021 by Jael Davis
Lead poisoning from myriad sources impacts thousands of New Jersey children every year, causing long term medical and behavioral issues that do not always resolve when lead exposure ceases. Exposure is particularly common in communities of color and low-income communities due to systemic inequities. Recent highly-publicized examples of lead-contaminated drinking water have drawn attention to this important issue, but more work needs to be done.
That’s why New Jersey Future, along with numerous partners including policy advocates and community members and organizations, launched Lead-Free NJ. This new collaborative seeks to mitigate the prevalence and impact of lead contamination across the state by pursuing an action-oriented advocacy agenda.
The collaborative’s goals include:
- Holistic lead remediation—eliminate childhood lead hazards within 10 years.
- Equitable policy change—Achieve adoption of proactive, equitable state and local policies that ensure that our environment is lead-safe and our children are unburdened by lead.
- Empowered communities—Build the capacity and power of grassroots groups and affected communities.
Join us as we work together to make New Jersey lead free!
Hoboken’s Focus on Vision Zero Makes Streets Safe for Everyone
May 6th, 2021 by Tim Evans
The transportation-focused website Streetsblog recently turned a spotlight on Hoboken, praising the New Jersey city for its success in eliminating pedestrian deaths. The blog says that Hoboken “shows what can be accomplished when a municipality really focuses on the zero of Vision Zero.” The term “Vision Zero” generally refers to the goal of reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero. In most places with such plans, the goal remains aspirational, but Hoboken has made it a reality.
Washington Street, Hoboken, New Jersey
Designed for People Before Cars
Hoboken benefits from several advantages, compared to other parts of the state and the country. Like most urban centers and first-generation “streetcar” suburbs in the Northeast and Midwest, Hoboken experienced its initial growth spurt in the decades before the automobile became the default mode of transportation in the U.S. Despite its population rebound over the last three decades, Hoboken still has fewer residents today (52,677 as of the Census Bureau’s 2019 municipal population estimates) than it did in 1930 (59,261). Hoboken is inherently pedestrian-oriented, because it was built during an era in which everyone was essentially a pedestrian, either walking around town or walking to and from public transportation.
Even within New Jersey, Hoboken’s street network is more grid-like and finer-grained than those of most other cities. Its median block size of 2.83 acres is small enough to rank Hoboken number 42 among the state’s 565 municipalities, with respect to block size (the median municipality has a median block size of 5.18 acres). Small blocks with frequent intersections create multiple routes for pedestrians, cyclists, and car drivers, as opposed to branching networks, which inhibit direct routes and force people into their vehicles and onto regional arterial roads. Additionally, the short distances between intersections that are characteristic of street grids tend to limit vehicle speeds, enhancing pedestrian safety.
Conversely, rapidly-growing metropolitan areas in the Sunbelt have developed with the automobile at the core of their urban fabrics. Their streets were designed with the primary goal of moving cars rapidly across town, treating pedestrians as an afterthought at best. Data corroborate this trend; the metropolitan areas with the highest pedestrian death rates, according to Smart Growth America’s Dangerous By Design 2021 report, are predominantly located in the Sunbelt.
Pursuing the Vision with Action
Still, Hoboken didn’t accomplish zero traffic deaths solely because of its pre-World War II development pattern. Its laudable achievement is the result of a deliberate and sustained effort, the centerpiece of which is the redesign of a 16-block stretch of Washington Street, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare. While Washington Street serves local shopping needs, the presence of Hoboken Terminal (one of the state’s busiest rail transit stations) at the corridor’s southern end generates additional pedestrian traffic by attracting visitors and commuters to and from elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area.
New Jersey Future awarded the project a Smart Growth Award in 2020 for capitalizing on the city’s well-connected street grid by adding design features that seek to improve the pedestrian experience. These tactics are replicable in any mixed-use downtown, so numerous New Jersey towns can learn from Hoboken’s achievements. Hoboken’s enhancements to pedestrian safety include:
- Curbside rain gardens, which capture stormwater, aesthetically improve the streetscape, and create buffers between pedestrians and moving traffic
- Curb extensions, which reduce the width of intersections, limit the speed of turning vehicles, and shorten crosswalks (consequently reducing the amount of time that pedestrians need to cross the street).
- Traffic signal improvements, including the incorporation of pedestrian-only phases and the addition of pedestrian countdown timers, which allow pedestrians to cross streets more safely.
- Efforts to increase the visibility of bus stops in order to alert drivers to the presence of people boarding or exiting buses
- Striping new bike lanes, which makes drivers more aware of the presence of cyclists and encourages cycling.
- Designating loading zones for trucks and other delivery vehicles, which reduces the frequency with which these vehicles double-park. This alleviates a major safety hazard for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers, and the rise of online shopping will likely make parking for delivery vehicles an even bigger issue in the future.
Benefits of Walkability
Getting people out of their cars for local trips produces numerous societal benefits: less air pollution, less time wasted behind the wheel, and regular exercise that can help ward off the many health problems that are symptomatic of a sedentary lifestyle. For older or disabled community members who cannot drive, living in a walkable town means that the loss of a driver’s license does not have to result in the loss of quality of life. And, of course, reducing car travel also helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, an important climate-change mitigation measure.
Fortunately, there is strong demand for in-town living and a “car-light”–or even car-free–lifestyle. Furthermore, New Jersey contains many centers with the “good bones” of well-connected street grids. But, to translate these assets into substantive behavioral changes, people must feel safe when walking. Hoboken should serve as a statewide–as well as national–model for how to turn Vision Zero into a reality.
A New Housing Model for New Jersey
May 4th, 2021 by Guest Author
By Joshua Zinder, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP
2021 President, AIA New Jersey Chapter
Managing Partner, JZA+D
Living and working in Princeton, it’s easy to see what makes our town special. My architectural work here reflects our community’s desire to retain its unique character. But Princeton – like many municipalities across the state – needs to grow to stay economically viable, which ideally means adding density instead of sprawling outward. The word “density” often makes my neighbors worry, because they want to preserve the character of our tree-lined streets with detached single-family homes. Also, there is a pervasive fear that the arrival of lower-income residents could reduce property values – a fear arising in part from misconceptions about affordable housing.
Market-rate options are unattainable statewide for large swaths of the population, with teachers, first responders and other essential members of our communities priced out. What neighborhoods like mine need, and what architects are trying to identify and promote, is a new model for housing that addresses this “missing middle housing” gap. In brief, this term coined by urban planner Daniel Parolek refers to “house-scale buildings with multiple units in walkable neighborhoods.”
Growth is inevitable, and the alternative for most of our municipalities is economic and cultural stagnation. The desire to keep a developer from putting up a large, ungainly apartment complex on a quiet residential corridor is entirely understandable, but the most common alternative is locating such developments in areas far from town centers, which fails to achieve the goal: walkable, sustainable, affordable, and diverse communities that can sustain economic growth. These apartment complexes are often the only entry-level option for low-to-moderate income renters moving to take essential jobs in places like Princeton. Ironically, even these commonly face opposition to approvals, thanks in part to high court rulings.
These qualities – walkable, sustainable, diverse – are typically associated with the best of urban living. City dwellers, especially younger ones, appreciate the socially dynamic and vibrant qualities of the urban lifestyle and seek some measure of them when they move to a smaller town. And residents of smaller towns appreciate those qualities, too. Who doesn’t like having a greater variety in options for dining, shopping, and entertainment? These folks, our neighbors, just need reasons to stop resisting growth.
As proponents of addressing missing middle housing, many of my colleagues in New Jersey’s architecture profession are looking for opportunities to devise creative, attractive solutions for promoting density and affordability. As 2021 President of AIA-New Jersey, our statewide professional organization, I have made promoting this effort a priority. Our goal is to identify and promote strategies for adding attainable housing units, weaving them into the fabric of our neighborhoods and leaving no tool left unused in the toolbox.
Here in Princeton several solutions have emerged – many of them approved and moving forward or completed – each carefully conceived to retain or even enhance the existing neighborhood character and offering a view of Princeton’s sustainable future. A ten-unit mixed-income development has opened in a former Masonic meeting house, the interior completely transformed while the historic façade was restored and the visual impact on the block minimized. Nearby a six-unit residence will add several floors to a one-story commercial structure, with a profile that steps back from the street as it rises and a new restaurant or retail amenity on the first floor, adding social dynamism as well as much-needed residential units.
Other strategies include redeveloping existing properties to add accessory dwellings or multi-unit structures on the rear of lots, retaining the familiar neighborhood feel. Downtown Princeton has seen recent activity in mixed-use corridors to redevelop residential units above street-level shops, activating our most walkable neighborhood.
And just a few blocks away plans are under way for a major municipally oriented development that will combine a variety of building heights and architectural styles. This optimal missing-middle housing mix will sit within a campus that will be open and permeable to pedestrian traffic, with publicly accessible spaces around the buildings offering community value. This campus will create a bridge between a neighborhood of single-family detached homes on one side and the historic Witherspoon-Jackson district (largely two-family houses) on the other, adding energy and walkability to a large swath of the town center while reflecting the area’s history and culture.
In the meantime, architects and professionals in related fields are working on ways to streamline how these solutions get implemented. Outdated zoning processes should be replaced with more responsive and nimble alternatives, allowing development to move more quickly and to everyone’s advantage.
The existing fabric of our cities and towns can and should fill the missing middle, rather than building midrise developments that lack any sense of scale or context or are located outside of municipal centers. The latter has served us poorly so far, while the former is a path to sustainable, successful economic growth throughout New Jersey.
Joshua Zinder, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP BD+C is managing partner of design firm JZA+D in Princeton and 2021 AIA-New Jersey president. Architects are creative professionals, educated, trained, and experienced in the art and science of building design, and licensed to practice architecture. Their designs respond to client needs, wants and vision, protect public safety, provide economic value, are innovative, inspire and contribute positively to the community and the environment. Founded in 1857, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) consistently works to create more valuable, healthy, secure, and sustainable buildings, neighborhoods, and communities. Through a dynamic network of more than 250 chapters and more than 95,000 member architects and design professionals, the AIA advocates for public policies that promote economic vitality and public wellbeing. Members adhere to a code of ethics and conduct to ensure the highest professional standards. The AIA provides members with tools and resources to assist them in their careers and business as well as engaging civic and government leaders and the public to find solutions to pressing issues facing our communities, institutions, nation, and world. The organization’s local chapter, AIA New Jersey, has served as the voice of the architectural profession in the Garden State since 1900. Based in Trenton, AIA New Jersey has over 2,000 members across six sections. For more information, please visit http://www.aia-nj.org
New Jersey Future Urges Congressional Delegation to Secure Funding for Lead Service Line Replacement
April 30th, 2021 by Gary Brune
New Jersey Future sent the following letter on April 27, 2021 to New Jersey’s Congressional Delegation recommending a federal funding allocation to support lead service line replacement programs:
As Congress debates various proposals to increase federal aid to address the problem of lead-contaminated drinking water, it is important to consider potential allocation formulas, as different choices may drastically alter New Jersey’s share.
New Jersey is estimated to have 350,000 lead service lines (LSLs), the fifth highest total in the country, which would cost an estimated $2.3 billion to replace. These figures are based on a 2016 analysis sponsored by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and assume an average cost of $6,700 per LSL replacement. Federal aid to offset these costs is vital, particularly for fiscally distressed cities with a high incidence of lead contamination.
Given the $45 billion recommended in the American Jobs Plan, President Biden’s infrastructure investment proposal, listed below are three examples of how this aid might be distributed:
- Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (SRF)
Based on New Jersey’s 1.7% share of federal SRF grants for drinking water projects, distribution of LSL replacement funds through this program would yield $765 million to the state. (As noted in the Jersey Water Works blog post, the state’s share of federal drinking water grants has declined over time and is significantly smaller than it should be.)
- Population
New Jersey accounts for 2.7% of the national population, which would result in $1.2 billion of federal aid.
- Share of Lead Service Lines
Based on AWWA’s estimate of a total of 6.1 million LSLs across the country, New Jersey’s estimated portion (350,000 LSLs) represents 5.7% of the national total, which would result in $2.6 billion of federal aid.
New Jersey would obviously benefit from a formula that emphasizes the number of known and suspected LSLs in each state. Additionally, cities such as Newark, which recently invested local and state funds to completely remove LSLs as a public health measure, should be eligible for reimbursement from the federal aid provided.
As Congress deliberates this issue, your influence and voice will be critical to ensuring that New Jersey children and residents are adequately protected.
