December 1, 2003
Ms. Lucy Voorhoeve,
Executive Director New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing (COAH)
New Jersey Department of Community Affairs
101 South Broad Street
P.O. Box 813
Trenton, NJ 08625
RE: COAH Rules
Dear Ms. Voorhoeve:
On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Regional Planning Partnership (RPP), I am writing to provide COAH with our comments on the proposed amendments to COAH's substantive and procedural rules. RPP is a non-profit, non-partisan research and advocacy group that supports the quality of community life through sound land use planning and regional cooperation.
RPP has been involved with affordable housing issues since established in 1968 by leaders from corporations and civic institutions interested in the future of New Jersey. One of the first items on RPP's agenda was to promote affordable housing to support the economy, promote economic equity and improve environmental quality by building housing near jobs, reducing auto travel.
Later, RPP (then known as MSM) joined with the NJAPA to write an amicus brief in the case that became known as Mt. Laurel II, in which we advocated, and the Court agreed, that affordable housing and environmental protection could both be accommodated in growth management plans at the local and regional level.
In addition, RPP has undertaken a number of surveys to track Mt. Laurel implementation over the years, convened many conferences on affordable housing and planning, and helped form the New Jersey Regional Coalition and the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment to ensure that there would be no conflicts among advocates for planning, housing, social justice and the environment in promoting Smart Growth policy.
RPP endorses, by reference in this letter, the comments submitted by the Coalition for Affordable Housing and the Environment. The Coalition has provided you with details in over 50 pages of comments that, although not repeated in this letter, RPP supports.
Having been a member of COAH for five years (1991-95), I know what a difficult job COAH has in balancing the great need for affordable housing in New Jersey with the sensibilities of local government and the lack of public resources. Because of the property tax structure in New Jersey, municipalities shun housing of all kinds - particularly affordable housing - because the costs of schooling far outweigh the revenues of all but the most expensive housing.
I also know that most growing municipalities feel they have been abused by the Courts and by COAH for forcing them to do what is politically and fiscally difficult to do. They rarely see their own complicity in the outcome by failing to understand the importance of affordable housing to their town and its residents or to plan adequately for their community's future.
I know, therefore, how the politics of housing policy led COAH to propose these rules, which take every opportunity to make it easy for municipalities to avoid providing affordable housing. But it would be completely wrong to implement them. RPP urges COAH to withdraw these rules and redraft them to provide a more realistic assessment of New Jersey's need for affordable housing and more rigorous targets and standards for ensuring that family and workforce housing is produced throughout the suburbs. It is only by following this recommendation, will people of all races and economic backgrounds have access to jobs, good schools and safe neighborhoods. In following this recommendation, COAH will be applying a thoroughly researched and documented strategy that will reduce the growth in the need for affordable housing, and provide an opportunity for urban revitalization and rural preservation that cannot be accomplished by the policies in place and those proposed by COAH. For the documentation, please go to the web site of the New Jersey Coalition, of which RPP is a member - www.regionequity.org.
The need is much greater than estimated in the rule: The need for housing in general, and affordable housing in particular, has unquestionably grown in the last 20 years, not diminished. In that time, New Jersey has become the fifth largest office market in the country. Over 100 million square feet of non-residential development has been built in the last ten years alone. In many regions of the state, the jobs-to-housing ratio is creeping up - RPP has documented it in central New Jersey. Of course, the population has also grown and only about 6% of all the housing that has been built in the last 20 year has been designated as affordable.
In spite of these statistics, the new rule has reduced the estimate of the need for rehabilitation and the amount of need expected in the future - from 119,500 units to 27,600 units. The need for future units has dropped from an anticipated 16,000 per year to 9,700 per year. The new rule also inflates the number of units that are expected to become affordable through "filtering" and "spontaneous rehabilitation," increased from 3,364 units/year in the Second Round to 4,179 units/year in the Third Round. I hardly think that it is a progressive policy to allow the deterioration of housing to play such a large role in making housing affordable to those in low and moderate income families! Allowing filtering to do the job will make the need for rehabilitation greater in the future.
On top of this manipulation of data, which is clearly intended to reduce the estimate of the need to as small a number as possible, COAH has proposed such a generous number of credits that the number of units from prior rounds that have not been produced ha s been reduced to -639 (negative)! This methodology should be completely scrapped and an unbiased estimate of the need produced, including prior round obligation.
The Need is the Need is the Need: COAH should not fear a real estimate of the need simply because they feel that they will fail to meet it. COAH has excuses: the Fair Housing Act limits COAH by making compliance voluntary and by specifying that no municipality need spend any of their money on affordable housing. Every one knows about the lack of resources for subsidies, etc. As an advocate, of course, I will be working to overcome these shortcomings, but COAH should not shirk their responsibility to estimate the need, simply because it may be a number that they are unable to address with the resources they have. A real understanding of the need can only help to provide motivation for more effective strategies being put into place.
The Mt. Laurel decisions indicted municipalities for shirking their responsibilities to 40% of the population. The Fair Housing Act was created because municipalities continued to need prodding to meet their responsibilities. If COAH abdicates its responsibility to ensure that more - not less - affordable housing is built in New Jersey, we will be forced to go back to the Courts and spend public money on lawsuits instead of housing.
I know that in the First Round, COAH was worried about the reaction of municipalities. Accordingly, the numbers that COAH produced in that round was far less than had been estimated by the Court before COAH was created by the Fair Housing Act. I know that in the Second Round - because I was a member of COAH at the time - COAH was worried about the effect of another set of targets, when most municipalities had not petitioned for certification to meet the first round. We were just emerging from a serious recession that had affected the fiscal balance in many communities. Accordingly, the numbers COAH produced in that round gave credits for "substantial" compliance and a two- for-one credit for rental units.
But enough. Times have changed. This is now the Third Round. We cannot keep diluting the need for political reasons. New Jersey municipal officials cannot continue to claim shock that the police powers that they exercise in the form of zoning comes with it the responsibility to exercise that police power for the general welfare of all. They cannot continually decry their fate that they must provide housing for their residents' children as they grow up and get jobs, for workers in their stores and offices. COAH should praise the few municipalities that have recognized that it is in their interests to provide affordable housing and demonstrate to others how public officials can still get re-elected and protect the public interest.
The new rules will cause sprawl: RPP rejects completely not only the claim made by Commissioner Susan Bass Levin when she unveiled the rules that these rules will result in the construction of "more" affordable housing, but also the claim that they represent Smart Growth and will "end suburban sprawl".
Let me review the definition of Smart Growth. Smart Growth is understood to produce sustainable development. Sustainable development means that growth is directed to balance a number of goals: the support of a prosperous economy, a healthy environment and social equity. Smart Growth is expected to reduce land consumption, reduce auto-dependency, support urban revitalization, improve environmental quality, protect resources, increase choice in housing and transportation and distribute the costs and benefits of growth equitably. This is not a menu, it is a package. Anything short of the entire package is not Smart Growth and will doom any incomplete effort to failure.
Over the last 60 years, there has been a slow decanting of population from the cities into the suburbs and rural areas of New Jersey. About 30 years ago, the jobs started to follow the work force. Job growth creates pressure for housing, to house the people that will take the new jobs. If housing is not provided where the jobs are locating, the growth pressure moves outward. As it is built at lower and lower densities, it is far more land consumptive than ever before and yet continues to fail to provide enough houses, or cheap enough houses, for the work force. That pushes housing further away.. Eventually the jobs will follow until the workforce and the economy are no longer in New Jersey.
That is what has caused sprawl for decades and, without a change in land use planning, the tax structure and housing policy, that is what will continue to cause sprawl in New Jersey. Words about stopping sprawl will not stop this trend. A housing policy that works against providing affordable housing the suburbs will not stop this trend.
Too many credits and loopholes: Written into the proposed rules are a number of ways in which credits are given for past obligations even though the housing was not produced. And there are many ways that municipalities can get new credits - such as restricting up to 50% of their obligation to seniors only - for housing that is not available for working families.
Proposal removes reinforcement of the State Plan and environmental protections: Although the old COAH rules were never considered effective enough in providing environmental protection or State Plan implementation, there were more efforts in those directions than in the current rule. These protections must be reinstated, strengthened and clarified as to how they are going to work. The rules that NJ DEP is writing must also specify how resources will be protected without interfering, indeed, while promoting, the production of affordable housing.
Regional Contribution Agreements: Regional Contribution Agreements (RCAs) were introduced in a different era, and can no longer be condoned. Although I recognize that RCAs have been used in many communities in the past to good effect, as a part of this rule, which has so many ways for a suburban municipality to avoid providing affordable housing, I can no longer support them. I do not agree with the Commissioner or RCA supporters that they will support Smart Growth in general or urban revitalization in particular. RCAs and other New Jersey housing and tax policies have put the most affordable housing in the poorest municipalities, where there have been significant job losses, the highest tax rates and the worst schools. The research of the New Jersey Regional Coalition, of which RPP is a founding member, demonstrates that this has been true. It also demonstrates that municipalities with the greatest wealth, with the lowest taxes and the best schools, have had the smallest number of affordable houses built.
That outcome is contradictory to the Mt. Laurel Doctrine. It is even contradictory to the intent of the Fair Housing Act and the mission of COAH.
Why affordable housing must be in the suburbs and no more in the cities: Urban planning research demonstrated conclusively over thirty years ago that urban renewal policies that locate affordable housing projects in cities had resulted in exacerbating the problems of urban revitalization by concentrating poverty, reducing the city's ability to create a stable fiscal base and fueling middle class flight and suburban sprawl. There is even more evidence today of the results (see the report by Myron Orfield, NJ Metropatterns) in which the facts of New Jersey's state of segregation by race and class are presented.
Besides the racism and classism that it represents, concentrating poverty in a sub-set of municipalities is wrong for the regions in which they are located and society as a whole. One of the primary indicators of pupil success is the extent to which a pupil is surrounded by poverty or not. The Chicago housing voucher program has demonstrated conclusively that providing housing for poor families in primarily non-poor neighborhoods and communities is the most effective way to see parents in jobs, children succeed in school and poverty to be left behind. Communities, regions and the state benefit fiscally and economically from this success, and therefore benefit in many more ways.
Therefore, we must find ways to put more - a great deal more - workforce and affordable housing in the suburbs and no more in the cities - just as sound Smart Growth policy as well as the Constitution of New Jersey requires.
If suburban sprawl is to be stopped, it can only be accomplished by retrofitting the sprawl development that has already taken place by integrating all kinds of housing - particularly affordable housing - in the suburbs, where the job growth has made New Jersey the fifth largest office market in the country. If we don't do this, we should be prepared to watch our labor force migrate out of state as they seek the affordable housing that New Jersey is not providing, and eventually taking our economy with it! If we don't provide housing near the suburban jobs, we won't stop sprawl - we will cause it.
If Smart Growth is intended to result in revitalized cities, that can only be accomplished by putting jobs and market rate housing in cities, downtowns and inner-ring suburbs. At the same time, revitalization requires resources to rehabilitate their existing housing stock. We must not use resources that should be used to create affordable housing in the suburbs, to fund through RCAs the rehabilitation of the existing housing stock in cities. We must find more resources to do it all: in the suburbs, create new affordable housing; in the cities, downtowns and inner-ring suburbs, create new market rate housing and rehabilitate old housing. That would be the efficient, equitable, and "smart" policy to follow. These rules do not provide anything toward this.
In suburban areas, Smart Growth is only "smart" if it makes existing suburban communities into more compact and mixed centers in selected priority transportation corridors that will:
- save land, energy and resources;
- improve environmental protection;
- balance jobs and housing;
- reduce auto-dependence;
- increase transportation and housing choices;
- make public investments more efficient ;
- and distribute the costs and benefits of growth more equitably.
In urban areas, Smart Growth is only "smart" if it reduces the racial segregation and concentration of poverty that currently characterize our cities, most of our existing downtowns and, increasingly, our first- generation suburbs. We must do this for economic, environmental and equity reasons. That is what sustainable development, or Smart Growth, is about.
Increasing affordable housing in the cities contributes to poor households staying poor and increasing the need for affordable housing over time. Chicago's voucher program that sent poor households into housing in the suburbs demonstrated it to be the most effective way to enable low and moderate income families to climb into positions of higher income, reducing the need for more affordable housing over time.
David Rusk, author of Inside Game/Outside Game, has demonstrated in his work that the best indicator for a child's success in school - the major step on the ladder out of poverty - is the extent to which that child is surrounded by poverty in school. In New Jersey, although white poor children are likely to be in classes with middle class children, minority poor children are likely to be in classes with other poor children. Considering the NJ Supreme Court in Abbott v. Burke, directed the Legislature to approve the biggest school construction program in the State's history in the name of providing poor urban school children with an equal chance for success, the data would indicate that it will be wasted unless we support it with market rate housing in the cities and more affordable housing in the suburbs.
RPP stands ready to be constructive: Having been with RPP for almost twenty years, and having been a member of COAH from 1990 to 1995 and a member of the State Planning Commission from 1996 to 2001, I know something about the arcane, controversia l and interrelated aspects of affordable housing and smart growth policies in New Jersey. I know that I am asking you to accomplish that which has never been accomplished because of its political difficulty.
The tools and concepts that RPP staff has been discussing with your staff - Marge Della Vecchia, Adam Zellner and others - in particular RPP's 3-System Planning, Regional Action Plans (RAPs) and the use of RPP's zoning build-out model (GOZ®), I feel will provide you with a means to set affordable housing targets regionally. The Department could and should use these tools to set statewide jobs and housing growth targets in the Endorsement Guide and in COAH's Third Round, just as Commissioner Campbell is setting standards to meet the environmental aspects of Smart Growth. With all three standards as its basis - environment, economy, and equity - New Jersey's State Development and Redevelopment Plan will truly be a guide to sustainable development in New Jersey.
I would welcome the opportunity to explore these ideas further with you and your staff. I believe that our tools and concepts will help you integrate a "growth share" approach to affordable housing that has worked so well in Montgomery County, Maryland, with New Jersey's nationally known progressive Mt. Laurel doctrine. Thank you for giving our views your consideration, and look forward to the earliest opportunity to discuss them.
As I mentioned earlier in this letter, Thank you for the opportunity to comment on these rules.
Yours sincerely,
Dianne R. Brake
President