ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Elected officials from nine towns in New Jersey have launched a court battle against the state’s new affordable housing regulations, hoping to derail them before they take effect. But other lawmakers – including the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city, Newark – are defending the state’s new rules, arguing that it’s time for everyone to “finally do their fair share” for working-class people who need a place to live.
On Monday, nine municipalities in New Jersey filed a lawsuit against the state, seeking to overturn its new affordable housing law. The list includes Denville, Florham Park, Hillsdale, Mannington, Millburn, Montvale, Montville, Old Tappan and Totowa.
The law was passed last year. It gives the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs the authority to run the development of affordable housing in the state – and determine how many units every town and city must build over the next decade.
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Municipalities are expected to get their new quotas in October. They’ll have to come up with a plan and get it approved by state officials by next summer.
This week’s lawsuit – filed under the banner of the “Local Leaders for Responsible Planning” coalition – might throw a monkey wrench into that plan, however.
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According to Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali, who is spearheading the effort, it’s not fair for towns like those in the lawsuit to be forced to support the housing needs of other municipalities, which are often significantly bigger.
The coalition called out 62 “urban aid municipalities” for “unfairly” imposing their housing needs on their neighboring towns and cities. The lawsuit also challenges the dispute process laid out in the law, which the coalition alleges will take the decisions about housing policies out of the hands of local elected officials.
“We all want safe, welcoming, and vibrant neighborhoods, but the new Fourth Round mandates from Trenton go too far and will place unnecessary strain on our towns without providing any resources to make it work,” Ghassali said.
“Our priority is to fight so that local elected officials have the power to ensure our towns grow in a responsible manner, which this law prevents,” he added.
This stance was repudiated by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka on Tuesday, who issued a statement in defense of the state’s new law.
“New Jersey’s housing market is short 200,000 affordable units, at least, said Baraka, who is one of several Democratic candidates running for governor in 2025.
“This is a statewide issue that is driving up costs for everyone living in our state, not just in the suburbs or cities but across the board,” he said. “Our children can’t afford to live in the communities they grew up in, much less raise their own families in the Garden State because our home rule history has crippled our ability to evenly plan and build the diverse housing we need to meet the demand.”
“We’ve known this problem for 40 years and every day we delay action is a day we hurt working families already struggling to keep up with New Jersey’s cost of living,” Baraka insisted.
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Newark’s mayor added that the state also has a role to play:
“The Legislature was right to create this new law and demand our cities and towns to finally do their fair share for the people of this state, but we can’t continue to impose requirements without direction. We need an administrator who can execute comprehensive plans with local government housing advocates, trade unions and private contractors. We need to dedicate the majority of the tax credits used to build luxury housing towards affordable and workforce housing. We need to give the cities and towns the resources they need to identify space, build plans, subsidize starter home ownership, allow for accessory dwelling units and actually meet their affordable housing requirements.”
“Most New Jerseyans understand the need for more housing because most New Jerseyans want to reduce costs, prevent homelessness and raise our standard of living,” Baraka said. “But we can’t do this by fighting each other. When we waste time fighting amongst ourselves, housing continues to go unbuilt and we all lose.”
“This isn’t an issue isolated by zip code or street sign – this is a collective issue that must have a collective approach because equity in housing and housing development should not only be a guiding principle, it is actually the solution to New Jersey’s affordability problem,” Baraka concluded.
Newark’s mayor isn’t the only elected official who is standing up for the state’s new rules.
Assemblywoman Yvonne Lopez (NJ-19), one of the co-sponsors of last year’s law, argued that “seniors can’t afford to stay in their homes” and said that many “young people can’t afford to live in – or see a future – in New Jersey.
“We worked with mayors to ensure the law is workable and will give responsible local elected officials the tools they need to accomplish this goal,” Lopez said Tuesday, reacting to the legal roadblock launched this week.
Another sponsor of the law, Sen. Troy Singleton (NJ-7), charged to its defense after this week’s legal challenge.
“Affluent, suburban towns opposing affordable housing mandates is nothing new – same story, different day,” Singleton said. “What is incredibly offensive, beyond using taxpayer dollars to fund this politically-driven, superfluous lawsuit, is the attempt to use the legal process to intentionally delay our affordable housing laws – not by weeks or months, but years.”
The Fair Share Housing Center called the legal effort a “smokescreen” and said it will likely be thrown out of court.
“This lawsuit is nothing new — it’s supported by many of the same ultra-wealthy communities who have fought affordable housing for decades, every step of the way,” the nonprofit charged. “The lawsuit also is a thinly veiled attempt to revisit through the courts arguments that failed in the political process.”
AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN NEW JERSEY
When Gov. Phil Murphy signed the new law last year, he gave some background about what led to its creation. He wrote:
“Affordable housing has been a central public policy challenge in New Jersey for nearly half a century. Forty-nine years ago, in a case brought by two local branches of the NAACP, the New Jersey Supreme Court held in a landmark ruling that every municipality must ‘make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing.’ The court went on to say that towns cannot stand in the way of opportunities for low- and moderate-income housing. This principle became known as the Mount Laurel doctrine. To this day, it is studied by law students and lawyers all across the nation.”
There have also been negative impacts from the Mount Laurel doctrine, some pundits point out.
Community activists have complained that real estate developers have been able to use the doctrine to file “Builders Remedy” lawsuits in order to build large, multi-family developments that may be in conflict with municipalities’ master plans – setting up conflicts between local leaders and angry residents.
The New Jersey Legislature later adopted the Fair Housing Act in 1984 and created the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) — a bipartisan agency of members representing different interest groups — in order to prevent courts from becoming the forum for resolving these land use issues.
“For decades, all three branches of government have wrestled with how to apply the principles of Mount Laurel in practice,” Murphy wrote last year. “At times, our state Legislature has tried to address this issue. At other times, the process for determining affordable housing obligations was left to an executive branch agency. But more recently, over the last 10 years, this process has mainly played out in the courts, through litigation.”
The time for that is over, Murphy said.
With the signing of last year’s bill, the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs is now running the numbers. Towns will have the freedom to come up with plans to meet those quotas. Municipalities can earn bonus credits for constructing affordable housing where it is needed most, such as transit hubs, or for providing housing for vulnerable populations like senior citizens.
The new process will replace the role previously played by the COAH, which has been “defunct” for over a decade and is formally abolished under the bill, the governor’s office said.
The law also bans regional contribution agreements — in which towns pay neighboring municipalities to bolster their affordable housing stock instead.
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