Housing advocates object to new bill changing rules

Monday, March 22, 2010
By MELISSA HAYES
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

Hudson County affordable housing advocates are urging state senators to vote against a bill that would abolish the Council on Affordable Housing.

"All the way around it's a bad thing for affordable housing in the state," said John Restrepo, president of the Jersey City Affordable Housing Coalition.

The coalition is comprised of banks and organizations such as the Jersey City Episcopal Community Development Corporation where Restrepo is director of real estate, that advocate for and provide low- and moderate-income housing in Hudson County.

The measure sponsored by Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union Township, would replace COAH and existing requirements with a new set of rules.

State Sen. Sandra Cunningham, D-Jersey City, vice chairwoman of the Senate Economic Growth Committee, voted the measure out of committee last Monday.

Sen. Nicholas Sacco, D-North Bergen, said he agrees that COAH isn't working.

"Its regulations place an unreasonable burden on municipalities," Sacco said in a statement. "COAH needs to be improved, to serve the interests of both municipalities and people seeking affordable housing. I will be studying this bill carefully to determine if it can fix these problems."

Lesniak's proposal would offer affordable housing exemptions for "inclusionary communities," which he defines as having 7.5 percent of its homes deed-restricted as affordable, or 33 percent if the housing is comprised of townhouses, mobile homes or multifamily housing.

Under his proposal, every Hudson County municipality would qualify for an exemption.

But Restrepo said Lesniak's bill would eliminate a fee developers paid when they didn't build affordable housing - a fee that helped fund thousands of housing units in urban areas.

The bill reverses a 2008 amendment to the law that allowed municipalities to sell their requirements off to another municipality.

The bill also allows developers to build affordable units off-site.

"If you're a developer building a 500-unit luxury condo development in Downtown Jersey City you don't have to build any affordable housing there, you can go build in Greenville," Restrepo said.