Where is all the affordable housing?

High property Taxes in NJ

 

Where is all the affordable housing here in New Jersey? As I myself searched for a place to live at an affordable price, I found very little housing available for those with a low income.

 

As I looked at listings with my realtor these past four weeks I was told that housing for the working poor is just about non-existent while homes that cost over $1 million dollars are being built at a rapid rate. While there is a mandate to build housing by law, the Fair Housing Act, the act itself is still being challenged in New Jersey’s court system.

 

Per NJ Spotlight– “The issue of affordable housing in New Jersey has a long and contentious history, dating back to state Supreme Court rulings in the 1970s and 1980s that municipalities cannot use zoning to try to keep out certain groups of people and have an obligation to provide their “fair share” of the homes affordable to those living in their region. The Fair Housing Act, signed in 1985, set rules for towns to follow and established the Council on Affordable Housing to oversee that process. While that worked for a while, COAH had no valid rules in place since 1999 and when its most recent attempt at drafting new rules deadlocked in 2014, the Supreme Court kicked the issue back to the state court system, where hearings and settlements have begun to occur.”

While I concur with the complaints made by many municipalities that the quota imposed is unrealistic, the need for housing is extraordinarily great. Both due to the high cost of living and the poor condition of a lot of the low income housing stock. There is housing available, very limited, for the elderly and disabled; then why can not we have some more homes for those in great need of shelter. There a mindset out there that equates being poor and living in squalor.  While some of you might think that this is a truism, you would be surprised to find that most people do their best to keep up the place where they live. It is only those who have lost all hope and/or have other mental/addiction problems who do not care about how their home’s (neighborhood’s) condition.

People of all income brackets do not want to live in a dump, they might have humble surrounding but they do make their home be as nice as they can possibly afford to. I know that no one wants neighbors who live like pigs next to them, I know I do not! Being poor does not make you a pig and being rich doesn’t mean that you are not.

So all I am saying is that affordable housing needs to be built. Not just in the cities, but everywhere near public transportation. It needs to not overburden a city/town/municipality and yet there has to be enough housing stock for those who can not otherwise afford to live here in New Jersey.

That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike

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