General Category > Hackensack Discussion
Affordable Housing funds
just watching:
Well, rents and houses for sale are both ridiculously overpriced in New Jersey, compared to similar housing in other states. I can rent a whole house in Ohio or central Virginia for $800 a month, and that's a relatively new suburban house with 3 bedrooms.
Some sort of affordable housing is needed for New Jersey. The one thing I do agree with the governor and foes of affordable housing is that THE BUILDER'S REMEDY has to go. The idea of destroying zoning and open space for such housing is not acceptable. I offer a few alternatives:
(1) A zoning solution. Require that no municipality may reserve more than 75% of it's housing stock in the form of single-family houses and condominiums. Areas reflecting 25% of each town will have to be rezoned to allow houses to be subdivided to create affordable units, or new construction including affordable units. Every municipality should be required to have its zoning allow 10% of the housing stock to be multi-unit, in redevelopment areas or adjacent to local business districts. So instead of builders deciding zoning changes by lawsuit, towns will have local control in deciding where the multi-unit can go
(2) encourage trailer parks and trailer homes, with reasonable criteria of trailer separation. No packing them like sardines in Moonachie. And have them count as affordable housing. State and federal land used for military purposes can be found for some of this. I am sure, for instance, that places like Fort Dix and Piccatiny Arsenal can give up 100 acres for trailers, and there will be no impact at all to the facilities.
(3) encourage more rehab's of older apartment buildings in urban areas. For Hackensack, I could see 275 Beech Street converted into affordable condominiums. That's a win-win for everyone. And it will encourage ownership.
Editor:
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/17/02/01/new-poll-finds-nj-majority-for-affordable-housing-but-their-towns-already-have-enough/
ericmartindale:
This whole issue is completely different from what it was only a few years ago. And nothing like it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Our whole region is in a catastrophic housing crisis. There is an extreme shortage of decent 3-bedroom apartments, so much so that the cost to rent them in places with no rent control has nearly doubled in the last 10 years. Income has barely increased in the same time period. Who needs these apartments --- families with children.
Even if minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, that's still only about $30,000 a year. You can't qualify to rent anything with that income. And some people want to keep minimum wage at $8-something. The whole situation is absurd.
There's just a total disconnect. You can survive on public assistance, and you can survive making $75,000 a year. In the middle, you can't survive.
How is a family of 4 to survive making $45,000. You can't. It's impossible. Just run a basic household budget, and you'll see that a family of four can't really survive making less than $60,000. And that's if your situation is PERFECT. If you have credit card debt, alimony or child support payments, medical debt, you are underwater.
Almost all of our public policy makers are older people who own homes and have good income. They have no clue what's going on out there, how people are squeezed into oblivion. But when their son or granddaughter decides to move from NJ to flyover country, the realization starts to set in. There's just no future here. Our region is for the rich and it's for the poor. Anyone else is smart to get out.
ericmartindale:
I published a comprehensive essay on the housing crisis for the February 3, 2017 blog post on the Newark Tenants United website.
http://www.newarktenantsunited.org/index.html
Editor:
http://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/news/local/housing-advocate-calls-for-more-affordable-units-in-new-jersey/article_6cf4602a-209c-11e7-ad3c-d7e3a9fdb09a.html
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