Mayors seek change to affordable housing law
Tarantolo: 1985 law should reflect current housing issues in towns
BY DANIEL HOWLEY Staff Writer

At least a dozen mayors in the state have joined forces to seek reform to the state affordable housing law, which currently calls for "unrealistic" demands in towns throughout New Jersey, including Eatontown.

The group of mayors met last week as part of the Mayors' Housing Policy Committee, which was established by the New Jersey League of Municipalities (NJLM) and tasked with identifying areas of the state affordable housing law that needs reform.

The committee will make recommendations to the state Legislature on what changes they feel should be made to the New Jersey Fair Housing Act of 1985 in order to make it more consistent with current housing issues facing towns across the state, according to Eatontown Mayor Gerald Tarantolo.

"The thrust of the mayors' meeting was that we ought to look at the original law and start to address some of the current contradictions to the law," Tarantolo said.

One such contradiction that Tarantolo said negatively impacts Eatontown is that the law currently calls for any building constructed prior to 1980 be prohibited from counting toward a town's affordable housing quota.

The state's Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), which operates under the terms of the Fair Housing Act, requires that Eatontown provide 490 units of affordable housing by 2014.

According to Tarantolo, Eatontown has 18 apartment complexes and three trailer parks that were built before 1980 and should be applied towards the borough's affordable housing quota, but are disqualified under current law.

If the units were deemed as affordable housing, Eatontown would have approximately 2,600 units of affordable housing, Tarantolo said.

"So the legal team that is going to be working with this committee essentially has identified that several facets of the 1985 law are going to be challenged and that's a good thing," Tarantolo said.

"We have always said that Eatontown is not exclusionary in our zoning," he said, adding, "We are in fact inclusionary. More than 50 percent of our residents live in apartments, which is affordable housing, yet we get no credit for that."

Tarantolo has called Eatontown's affordable housing mandate "unrealistic" and "impossible," explaining that the borough is already 97 percent developed and would not be able to build more affordable housing.

Established in 1985 by the Fair Housing Act, COAH was formed in order to address a series of state Supreme Court rulings, known as the Mount Laurel Decisions. COAH is a quasi-judicial agency tasked with determining and enforcing affordable housing requirements for state municipalities.

Since its inception, COAH has passed a series of updated affordable housing regulations, with its most recent updated Round III guidelines approved in June. It is the updated regulations that directly contradict multiple components of the 1985 Fair Housing Act, according to Tarantolo.

"It has been determined, based on legal review, that a lot of the content of the 1985 law has contradictions as it relates to what is happening today," Tarantolo said.

Michael Cerra, one of the League of Municipality's Senior Legislative Analysts said, "The end game, we would hope, is that we could proactively seek some short term tweaks to the law and some long term reform."

According to Cerra, the Mayors' Committee hopes to eventually develop a policy proposal based on potential changes to the Fair Housing Act, and then bring it to the state Legislature.

"Through the next couple of weeks and months we want to develop a proactive agenda to improve the Fair Housing Act," Cerra said.

He added that the Mayors' Housing Policy Committee is unrelated to the NJLM's legal appeal of COAH's approved Round III guidelines.

Filed in July, the League is seeking to challenge what they call the "flawed methodology" that COAH uses to determine a municipality's affordable housing quota.

When determining a municipality's housing requirement, COAH looks at the town's wealth, available land, employment opportunities and fiscal capacity. In its challenge, the NJLM points to multiple errors in the data COAH uses to determine affordable housing requirements under its Round III guidelines.

COAH's Round III regulations create unjustified and unsupportable adjustments to the first- and second-round numbers, which result in unachievable obligations for many municipalities, according to the League.

At a Sept. 10 Eatontown Council meeting, Tarantolo said that COAH used an aerial survey of Eatontown to determine the amount of developable land each municipality has. That survey, as well as other changes to the agency's guidelines, resulted in an increase from the borough's previously determined affordable housing obligation of 92 units to 490 units.

Yet, according to the NJLM, much of the land that COAH determined to be available for development is either preserved for open space or owned by private residents.
Contact Daniel Howley at
dhowley@gmews.com.