Op-Ed: Affordable housing in New Jersey — a call to action

NJ Spotlight News, November 20, 2024

By Chris Sturm, Peter T. Rosario, Baye Adofo-Wilson

We all know people who have left New Jersey — from recent graduates to young families to newly retired seniors. In fact, New Jersey had the fourth-largest net domestic outflow of residents from 2020 to 2023 and the nation’s highest share of 18- to 34-year-olds living with their parents.

A key factor in the desire to leave the state is the cost of living. New Jerseyans are heading to states like Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas, where median home values are less than $300,000, well below our state’s median home value of $461,000. These former residents are telling us what is affordable for them, but we are not listening as they continue to pour out of the state.

Housing is the linchpin for both personal success and thriving communities. People will stay in New Jersey, but only if they can afford a home in a neighborhood where they can thrive. Meanwhile, the housing crisis continues to worsen. Many factors are driving up costs and making it hard to create enough new homes at a range of prices. In a time of continued high costs, high interest rates and limited housing stock, New Jersey leaders need to double down on the issues within their control. As a group of leaders, we see many solutions within reach.

For example, last spring, the governor and Legislature enacted a new law to make it easier for towns to plan for affordable housing under the Mount Laurel doctrine. Thanks to this victory, hundreds of communities are getting to work, planning for where affordable homes can be built over the next decade. The implementation of Mount Laurel serves as a great starting point to address affordability issues in New Jersey, but we must do more.

As thousands of municipal, county, and state-level leaders meet this week at the annual League of Municipalities conference — where housing will be top of mind for so many — we want to encourage dialogue and courageous conversations to help our children, parents, friends and colleagues stay in the state we all love.

A road map

Working together with a growing and diverse group of partners under the banner “Great Homes and Neighborhoods for All,” we have established the following shared vision: Everyone in New Jersey deserves an affordable place to live in a safe, inclusive and vibrant community — a community with schools, healthy food, jobs, parks and green spaces conveniently within reach.

The group has developed a commonsense and common-ground roadmap to realize this vision, which includes:

• producing more new homes and upgrading and preserving existing housing with stable rents;
• protecting residents from displacement due to rising costs, climate hazards and other factors;
• ensuring that municipal rules for development allow for the kinds of housing that people desire: compact, mixed-income homes in walkable neighborhoods;
• working with state government to retool policies and programs to match this vision, streamline processes and reduce the administrative burden of all stakeholders;
• making it easier for cities and towns to do the community planning needed to guide development so that it is attractive and enhances the community;
• cultivating a statewide network of local campaigns in support of great housing and great neighborhoods.

Beyond these broader principles, we have been developing more specific, short-term actions that can be accomplished in the next two years. As just a few examples, we are exploring ways to streamline the local land-use approval process; enhance state economic incentive programs and accelerate their distribution; and add flexibility to fine-tune state housing strategies so they can work in each of New Jersey’s varied regional housing markets, from pricey Bergen County to lower-cost rural areas.

Ultimately, we have to acknowledge that the tired “Not in My Backyard” arguments that dominate too many of these discussions have backfired on all of us. In trying to preserve our neighborhoods for our children and parents, we have done the opposite. We have made it untenable for too many New Jerseyans to raise a family or retire in our beloved state. We need to shift the conversations in local meetings, which can only happen if the people who want and need better housing are equipped to meaningfully engage in the processes that determine whether, where and how new homes are built.

Housing is personal. Our homes are the center point of our ecosystems and the foundation for a healthy and fulfilling life. We should all love where we live. The principles of the “Great Homes and Neighborhoods” initiative build on the Mount Laurel victory by laying out action steps that state and local leaders can take over the next two years. We can keep people in New Jersey and address affordability, if we work together.

Learn more at njfuture.org/greathomesandneighborhoods.