New Jersey will require an average of 150 new affordable homes per town

New Jersey officials have announced how many low-priced homes most towns must develop in the next 10 years — and the fighting over the process has already started.

The state's Department of Community Affairs on Friday posted details of each towns’ required numbers, ahead of the Oct. 20 deadline included in the new affordable housing law signed earlier this year by Gov. Phil Murphy. According to the department's calculations, the total target number for New Jersey is 84,698 affordable homes, with an average of about 150 units per town.

Murphy said in a statement after the numbers were released that he was “grateful” the agency met its deadline. “We look forward to seeing this law implemented and benefiting families across the Garden State,” he said.

State housing experts estimate that New Jersey needs more than 200,000 affordable homes for low-income people who often spend more than 50% of their income on rent.

The issuing of the state's numbers sets off a series of new deadlines over the coming months for towns to compile plans for how to execute the development. More than 500 towns covered under the Mount Laurel Doctrine, a 40-year-old state Supreme Court decision mandating that towns contribute their fair share of affordable housing, learned their numbers from the state last week.

Twenty-three New Jersey towns are currently suing to invalidate the state law passed by the Legislature this year, which laid out guidelines for how the numbers were calculated. The towns claim the law unfairly imposes a requirement on towns to develop more and more housing without accounting for how much development they can truly support.

Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali, who is leading the coalition of towns suing to overturn the law, said on Facebook that the state was putting an “unfair burden” on towns.

“Every community in New Jersey should be concerned about the strain these numbers will place on their budgets, infrastructure and services,” he said. Montvale was given a target of 348 affordable homes, more than double the statewide average.

Since the Mount Laurel Doctrine fully took effect in 1987, the state has allocated affordable housing through “rounds.” At the start of each round, the state tells municipalities how many affordable units they need to make land available for and gives them a timeline for development. The lengths of each round have varied from six to 25 years due to politics, lawsuits and local opposition.

The affordable housing targets provided to towns last week represent the numbers for the fourth round of Mount Laurel, which will run from June 2025 through 2035.

Some towns are still fighting their obligations from the prior round. For example, Gothamist has chronicled a bitter and protracted court fight in Millburn, one of the richest suburbs in the state, over an affordable housing complex that the town signed on to build three years ago and then reneged on the agreement.

Millburn officials have signaled they plan to continue to oppose the project, even as the state assigns them more requirements for the next round of Mount Laurel developments. For the next round, Millburn was given a target of 555 affordable homes.

Not all New Jersey town officials are approaching the new requirements in such an adversarial manner. Earlier this month, Gothamist reported that officials from South Brunswick — a town that once fought hard against state-mandated affordable housing obligations — reached a deal in court with housing advocates that could clear the way for more than 1,500 new low-priced homes in the community over the next decade. The agreement made South Brunswick the first municipality to commit to targets ahead of the state's new mandates.

After seeing the numbers released on Friday, Princeton’s Town Council President Mia Sacks said her initial reaction was that the state’s targets are “reasonable, and if anything, slightly lower than what many expected.” Princeton was assigned 276 units for the next round, according to the Department of Community Affairs.

“It will take us some time to digest, but time is short … there is a tight timeframe [to plan], so we have to start the planning process,” Sacks said.

What happens next

Now that New Jersey towns have received the affordable housing numbers from the state, each municipality has a few options for what to do next. But those decisions will need to be made fast.

By the end of January 2025, town officials must decide whether to accept these numbers, or get different numbers they’ve calculated themselves approved by the Department of Community Affairs. Any municipalities looking to fight its state-assigned number must file a challenge in court by the end of February. Then New Jersey and the municipality will need to work together to reconcile their grievances by April 1.

If all goes according to plan, municipalities will be asked to adopt their affordable housing plan to meet their Mount Laurel obligation for the 10-year round by June 30, 2025.

Jeffrey Surenian, a New Jersey attorney who specializes in representing towns in affordable housing matters, called the numbers put out by the state “grossly excessive.”

Surenian, who said his firm has represented approximately 80 municipalities, said the state’s focus was “exclusively on the need” for affordable housing and officials ignored “what the market will bear.”

“It's the equivalent of pouring water into a full glass,” he said, adding that “every last drop of blood was squeezed from these municipalities” during the last Mount Laurel round to meet their previous affordable housing obligations.

Surenian said the towns he represents will need more time to decide whether to challenge their new targets, though he noted that some of his clients have already reached out with their concerns after the numbers were published.

“People are kind of taken aback with the numbers,” he said.

Towns already planning to challenge the numbers

Ghassali, Montvale's mayor, said that despite his coalition’s lawsuit, his town will work to meet the deadlines outlined in the law. But he said a consultant has been hired to come up with an appropriate number for how much future affordable housing development the town can sustain.

“Our numbers will have more science to it … we will put all that together and come up with a valid number rather than just a random number,” Ghassali said. He added that the consultant is anaylzing Montvale’s vacant land available for development and exploring the environmental impacts that more construction would have on the town.

Still, New Jersey housing advocates say that even towns that have been asked to build 1,000 or more housing units will be able to find ways to fulfill the state's requests.

Matthew Hersh, director of policy and advocacy for the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, said the new law provides flexibility for municipalities to fulfill their obligations in a variety of ways. That includes redeveloping existing property, such as vacant office or business space, and converting single-family homes into two or three apartments.

“If they just think a little more creatively … those towns can come up with solutions that work for them,” said Hersh.