How New Jersey’s new affordable housing law aims to ease the housing crisis

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New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law this week that will make clear how much affordable housing every municipality in the state is expected to provide in the coming years.

New Jersey courts have long dictated that towns and cities there have to provide affordable housing, using what has become known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine. But judges determined the minimum number of units that those municipalities had to deliver on a case-by-case basis. The legislation Murphy signed on Wednesday would set statewide standards, which advocates say will help city leaders know what’s expected of them without relying on the courts.

The New Jersey measure comes as the costs of renting or owning a place to live have risen dramatically nationwide and states are wrestling with the problem of how to pressure local governments into allowing—and sometimes even providing—more affordable housing options.

Adam Gordon, the executive director of the Fair Share Housing Center, a New Jersey advocacy group, said the Garden State’s approach to generating affordable housing could be used in other places with strong housing markets. States like California and Massachusetts have recently adopted similar approaches. “It’s more of a question of political will, than a question of whether it works,” he said.

He noted that New Jersey issued more permits for housing last year than New York, even though it has less than half the population of its neighbor. New Jersey towns are issuing eight times the permits as their counterparts on Long Island. “You have places that are nearly identical economically,” Gordon said, “but they are having incredibly different land use and zoning policies.”

The law Murphy signed this week, Gordon said, is a refinement of a “proven system.” It will allow local governments to develop their own housing plans, with incentives to build places to live for older people and for people with disabilities. It would also encourage development near rail stations, particularly those close to New York. But if local leaders don’t produce an adequate plan, residents or developers could still sue to go ahead with their own proposals.

Murphy said the new law is part of his efforts to “establish New Jersey as a national leader in expanding affordable housing.”

“This legislation will enable us to build new, affordable housing, where it is needed, with far fewer hurdles,” he said when signing the bill into law. “And creating more affordable housing will also help close the racial wealth gap and help more families escape generational poverty.”

The governor also said in a statement that the changes would create more certainty and lower costs, and they would allow state agencies to “more quickly and efficiently allocate funding to municipalities and support those building affordable housing in our state.”

The New Jersey State League of Municipalities opposed the legislation, although it acknowledged that lawmakers had addressed many of the concerns it raised. The league did not return a request for comment, but city leaders across the state took opposing stances on the proposal.

Wealthier jurisdictions that use restrictive zoning have resisted efforts to build affordable housing within their borders, even before the new law passed. In Millburn Township, one of New Jersey’s wealthiest towns, for example, officials recently voted to pull out of a 75-unit affordable housing complex downtown, Gothamist reports. The town has only developed 38 affordable homes, out of a court-imposed target of 1,300. Now housing advocates want courts to strip local officials of their power to control development and to fine the defiant officials personally.

A similar situation is playing out in Milton, Massachusetts, where residents in February rejected a plan to create new zoning for multifamily housing. Attorney General Andrea Campbell said the town’s decision ran afoul of a 2021 law known as the MBTA Communities Act, which requires the 177 towns served by the transit agency to allow multifamily housing. The state’s Supreme Judicial Court agreed this week to hear Campbell’s lawsuit against Milton on an expedited basis, likely later this year.

Meanwhile, in California, many municipalities have been trying to avoid a “builder’s remedy” for localities that don’t secure state-approved housing plans in time. The provision in state law allows builders to go ahead with projects that include units for low- or middle-income people, even without local approval. More than 170 localities in California are operating without a state-approved plan.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and a state housing agency have intervened in a lawsuit involving the affluent city of La Cañada Flintridge.

“Since California strengthened its housing laws, cities have attempted, unsuccessfully, to skirt these rules,” Newsom said in December. “La Cañada Flintridge is another community making excuses rather than building their fair share of housing. La Cañada Flintridge will learn, as other communities have, that the status quo is no longer acceptable, and ultimately, they will be held accountable.”

Officials in other states have explored similar remedies. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, for example, unsuccessfully pushed for housing targets for municipalities last year. Connecticut lawmakers also considered, but ultimately removed, the idea last year too.

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News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

• HOMELESSNESS: Florida law prohibits homeless from sleeping in public spaces. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill Wednesday that forbids homeless people from sleeping in public places and prevents local governments from allowing them to stay there unless the state authorizes them to do so. The bill allows a county to designate specific areas for homeless encampments but requires them to be certified by the Department of Children and Families and mandates that they operate for no longer than a year. Critics have argued that the bill focuses on removing homeless people from the streets but does not address the underlying problems that contribute to homelessness, including economic struggles, mental health issues and drug abuse.

• ESG: Texas schools pull $8.5B from investment firm over fossil fuel “boycott.” The Texas Permanent School Fund pulled its $8.5 billion investment from the asset management giant BlackRock on Tuesday, saying the firm’s internal governance policies are harmful to the state's energy industry. The chairman of the State Board of Education issued a formal statement explaining that the New York company is among the leaders in the movement known as “environmental, social and governance,” or ESG, and therefore under a 2021 state law is ineligible for investments by Texas governmental entities. In response, BlackRock said “the decision ignores our $120 billion investment in Texas public energy companies and defies expert advice. As a fiduciary, politics should never outweigh performance, especially for taxpayers.”

• CYBERSECURITY: State DMVs hit by nationwide system outage. Multiple states reported disrupted services at their department of motor vehicles offices Thursday as a national outage halted license-related transactions for a few hours due to "a loss in cloud connectivity," according to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. The outage prevented a number of DMVs from issuing driver licenses and vehicle titles. The group noted that it was working internally and with cloud providers to determine the "root cause" of the connectivity problem. Meanwhile, in a ransomware attack that crippled the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender in early February, officials have acknowledged personal data may have been stolen—but won’t say much else about the ongoing effort to restore its systems after the hack.

• IMMIGRATION: Laws intended to drive undocumented immigrants out of Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation last week designed to make it harder for undocumented immigrants to live in the state—thereby, he said, possibly deterring them from coming there. The measures include driving without a license, “non-official ID cards” and bumping up certain criminal penalties. “We are throwing the book at you, and you are going to regret coming to the state of Florida,” he said.

• PUBLIC HEALTH: EPA bans asbestos, decades after a partial ban was enacted. The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced a comprehensive ban on asbestos, a carcinogen that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. The new rule would ban chrysotile asbestos, the only ongoing use of the substance in the U.S. Asbestos is found in products such as brake linings and gaskets and is used to manufacture chlorine bleach and sodium hydroxide that is used for water purification. The ban will be phased in over two years, which was met with support from the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, which had warned an immediate ban would “almost certainly cause shortages and price increases for chlorine and other disinfection and treatment chemicals used by the water sector.’'

• ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: $8.5B in grants announced to build chip plants. President Joe Biden on Wednesday awarded $8.5 billion in grants to Intel, a major investment to bolster the nation’s semiconductor production. The company will build and expand facilities in Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio and Oregon and create nearly 30,000 jobs. The funding comes from the CHIPS Act, which lawmakers passed in 2022 to help reestablish the U.S. as a leader in semiconductor manufacturing. The Biden administration, equipped with $39 billion in subsidies to distribute, is spearheading an ambitious effort to ramp up production of the tiny chips that power everything from smartphones to computers and cars.

• HEALTH CARE: California wants to pay doctors more to see Medicaid patients. In the state, Medicaid covers about 15 million people, but the rates it pays to doctors have not kept up, contributing to a crisis at some rural hospitals and making it harder for people enrolled in Medicaid to find doctors willing to treat them. Health care providers have been clamoring for California’s Medicaid program to pay them more. To do that, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state legislature have chosen to raise taxes on managed care organizations—the private companies that contract with the state to provide Medicaid benefits. Last year, Newsom signed a law that greatly increased this tax. It means the state will get $19.4 billion through 2026. On Thursday, the legislature voted to increase it again, which will generate an estimated $1.5 billion more.

• ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Tennessee’s ELVIS Act signed into law. The Volunteer State became the first in the nation to enact voice, image and likeness protections for its residents against misuses of artificial intelligence through a new bill, the ELVIS Act. Short for Ensuring Likeness, Voice and Image Security, the act adds artists’ voices to the state's current Protection of Personal Rights law. As a result, artists—and anyone else with exclusive licenses, like labels and distribution groups—can sue civilly for damages for AI deepfakes and other unauthorized uses of their voices and likenesses.

• HOMELESSNESS: Chicago referendum to raise real estate transfer tax falls short. A marquee initiative of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to raise the real estate transfer tax on million-dollar properties and put that money toward fighting homelessness appeared to fall short at the ballot. But a defiant Johnson vowed Wednesday to keep fighting for a dedicated revenue source to combat homelessness and warned anyone who might assume that one defeat will make him put the brakes on his progressive agenda to “buckle up” for a rocky ride. 

• MENTAL HEALTH: California voters approve mental health proposition. By a slim majority, Californians have voted to support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s latest effort to overhaul how the state cares for people with serious mental illness. The initiative includes a $6.4 billion bond to pay for treatment beds and permanent supportive housing. It also requires that counties spend more of the mental health funds they receive from a special tax on income over $1 million on services for people who are chronically homeless. 

• PUBLIC SAFETY: Firefighter deal to cost Houston about $72 million annually. Mayor John Whitmire and the city firefighters union are on the cusp of finalizing a massive multimillion-dollar settlement deal after years of contract stalemate and back-and-forth negotiations. The hefty agreement announced last week includes $650 million in back pay for firefighters dating back to 2017, along with a promised 34% raise in the next five years and a 10% hike by July 1. It is unclear how the deal will be paid for, but it's estimated the back pay will cost taxpayers 25 to 30 years to pay off.

• LAWMAKING: What makes people happy? California lawmakers want to find out. California Assemblyman Anthony Rendon wants to make happiness more central to policymaking, so he’s created a committee on “happiness and public policy outcomes” that held its first public hearing this week. At least 12 state legislatures have committees focused on mental health and substance abuse issues, but none has a committee devoted to happiness, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Because if we have everybody clothed, everybody housed, everybody has a job and they’re miserable, then we’ve failed at what we’re trying to do,” he said.

Picture of the Week

Starting this year, police departments are largely prohibited by California law from posting mug shots of nonviolent suspects or of acquitted defendants on social media accounts, reported the Los Angeles Times. Undeterred, the Murrieta Police Department announced plans this week to continue sharing photos of suspects on its social media accounts—with what appear to be Lego heads substituted for the suspects’ faces. As an example, the department shared on social media a photo of five suspects in a lineup, with the yellow cylinders obscuring their identities. “The Murrieta Police Department prides itself in its transparency with the community, but also honors everyone’s rights & protections as afforded by law; even suspects,” the department said in a post on Instagram on Jan. 1.

Government in Numbers

170,000

The number of miles in car trips per week and around 3,300 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually saved as a result of Denver’s e-bike rebate program. Now in its third year, the ambitious campaign to get residents to swap some of their driving for riding remains as popular as ever. “At 11 a.m. on the last Wednesday of February, Denver opened the first application window of the year for its e-bike rebate program, which offers residents upfront rebates of $300 to $1,400 for a battery-powered bicycle,” reported Grist. “Within three minutes, all of the vouchers for low and moderate income applicants had been claimed. By 11:08 a.m., the rebates for everyone else were gone too, and the portal closed.” There are about 160 e-bike incentive programs across the U.S. and Canada, and while Denver wasn’t the first to implement one, the size and success of its undertaking has attracted the attention of other governments and utilities.