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JerseySmarts.com

Urban Bias in Community Development

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The financial field that I work in is part of the larger “community development” industry. This is an industry that prides itself on helping those in need in anyway possible. I’ve been part of this industry as a member of one company or another for the last five years. It is an extremely rewarding industry in that you can make a decent salary (not comparable to market rate salaries) and you can help people at the same time.

However, one of the big problems that I’ve been finding in the community development field is that there is a bias against the unknown when it comes to defining “community.” Many of the industry leaders in this part of the nation (who, by the way, should let their younger staff have a larger role in strategic planning) have a biased view against using their scarce resources to help communities in the rural and suburban parts of the state. The idea is that since there is some private money in those areas, then the development projects in those areas can be financed by the local banks which are holding those private dollars. The problem is that this doesn’t happen and since it doesn’t happen, there is a drought of development to provide services to underserved communities in these types of areas.

In other words, if you’re not working on a project that is a multi-unit low-income housing development in extremely urbanized areas like Essex or Camden counties, then your projects probably aren’t going to get favorable rates or terms – if they get any at all. I saw this happen first hand today. My company puts its dollars into projects where underserved communities are provided with vital services. One of these services is education and the school choice movement. A project to provide a substantial loan to a school in northwest New Jersey (think near the Poconos in Pennsylvania) was shot down because one of the decision makers said, “This isn’t in Newark or Irvington or any type of urban market that we know something about. It’s off in a part of the state where we don’t know what’s going on.”

I’m sorry, folks, but that’s crap and it’s not good enough for the community development field. The scarce resources that are allocated to this industry either through private investment or through public funds cannot ALL be funneled to the Newarks and Camdens of the world. There are a variety of underserved communities around this state and this country and not all of them are concrete jungles.

It’s time that the urban bias in community development was addressed head on and eliminated from the industry.

Unnecessary Complications: Urbanizing Northwest New Jersey

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Today’s Daily Record ran a story entitled, “Builders in Highlands must add affordable units.” The increased production of affordable or workforce housing units in northwest New Jersey (also known as the Highlands) should be a priority – there’s no doubt about it. There are many people like me who are making a decent salary that just cannot afford to live in New Jersey because the asking prices for homes are completely outlandish. God bless my fellow New Jerseyans for wanting top dollar for their homes, but unlike the national housing bubble – the local housing bubble hasn’t totally burst yet in New Jersey.

That said, let me make it clear that the latest COAH rules are infringing on what makes the Highlands one of the most beautiful parts of the state. For those non-New Jersey folks out there, you wouldn’t know that you were still in this state if you were driving around portions of Morris, Sussex, Warren, and Hunterdon counties. We have large forests and some gorgeous wildlife areas that are being preserved by the Highlands Commission. But we also have Governor Money Bags (you non-New Jerseyans may know him as Jon Corzine). This man knows nothing of New Jersey outside of Newark, Trenton, and Camden and – frankly – the way that the masses in Essex, Mercer, and Camden counties constantly vote Democratic, he has no reason to know anything else.

From the article in the Daily Record:

COAH issued a “scarce resource restraint” on all Highlands towns under its control — 72 of the 88 towns in the region, including 24 of Morris County’s 32 municipalities — that appears to stop all construction that does not include affordable units. The order applies even to those towns in the Highlands region’s planning area, where compliance with a regional master plan is voluntary. Still allowed would be any building exempted from the 2004 Highlands law, including a single home on an existing lot.

Stopping construction may not be the best news for those of us looking for a home in that part of the state, but given the economy construction may have stopped anyway. Forcing affordable units into larger developments, though, is not the proper way to move forward. In fact, I talk to many housing developers on a daily basis and restrictions like these almost always lead to an increase in the total number of units being built – though the amount of land to build on is not increased. What does this mean? It means more bodies in less space. It’s unnecessary urbanization. More from the article:

COAH’s action was in response to Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s September executive order that affordable housing not be built at the expense of protecting water resources in the 860,000-acre environmentally sensitive region and that COAH and the New Jersey Highlands Council work together to reconcile their competing mandates.

Highlands Executive Director Eileen Swan said that COAH’s order won’t stop all development. Any subdivision in which 20 percent of the homes will be affordable — for instance, 10 units in a 50-unit development — and those meeting one of the 17 exemptions written into the Highlands law will be permitted. So will development in any town that proves to COAH it has ample water, sewer and land for building.

In other words, if you’ve already figured out how to build affordable units in one of the areas of the nation where real estate is still overvalued, then you can go ahead and build. But the interesting part of this blocked quote is Governor Money Bags’ order that affordable housing come second to protecting our natural resources. With one hand, he’s forcing higher density units and with the other he says to keep water resources at the forefront. Double talk at its best…or worst.

New Jersey should leave the Highlands area alone. There are more than enough brownfields (former industrial sites that are no longer in use) in this state that can be demolished, cleaned, and redeveloped. Let’s work on those areas first and then think about manifest destiny to the Pennsylvania border.