Most students at PHS know that New Jersey is not an easy place to buy a home, but what they might not know is that expensive housing doesn’t just make it harder to buy a house: it raises the costs of everything from insurance to ice cream. Affordable housing should be important to all of us, yet New Jersey’s housing prices still continue to rise. To understand why we lack affordable housing, New Jersey has to examine its past.

About 60 years ago, Mount Laurel officials began demolishing the “substandard” homes of lower income residents. In reply, the residents submitted a proposal to build affordable housing to replace the demolished homes. Unfortunately, an official shot the proposal down, responding: “If you people can’t afford to live in our town, then you’ll just have to leave.”

The residents sued the township. Three state Supreme Court cases later, the New Jersey Supreme Court established that all New Jersey municipalities have an obligation under the New Jersey Constitution to provide low-income and moderate-income housing, and the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) was created through the Fair Housing Act. Yet, years later, New Jersey home prices have risen to the point where the state has the ninth highest average home price in the entire country. To address this housing crisis, Governor Phil Murphy passed the bill known as A-40/S-50 this March. But how did we get to the point where a second bill is necessary?

Put simply, the Fair Housing Act became a joke. Every six years, the COAH underwent rounds of rulemaking, intended to update its formula to calculate township affordable housing obligations. However, due to incessant legal challenges, the COAH became unable to pass any reforms at all, which culminated in Governor Chris Christie attempting to abolish COAH. As a result, by 2015, the COAH was “declared moribund” by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Throughout this all, wealthy townships ignored the COAH by engaging in endless legal disputes and utilizing loopholes to shift their responsibilities to other towns.

This matters for everyone who lives in New Jersey. Fewer houses and higher demand lead to higher property values. As housing prices increase, so too do insurance premiums and property taxes. With people priced out of buying houses, landlords raise rents to take advantage of increased demand for shorter-term housing. When a state becomes more expensive to live in, businesses raise prices to pay higher loan fees and rents. Finally, fewer people seek to migrate to expensive states, resulting in reduced commerce and tax revenue. A-40/S-50 aims to address these issues by replacing the COAH with a new framework to calculate township affordable housing requirements, as well as provide support for Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) programs. PILOT programs allow affordable housing to be constructed without putting the cost of construction on taxpayers by reducing taxes on developers and allowing the construction of new marketrate housing. PILOT programs are not perfect, since they don’t provide funding to the school board. Yet not every housing development even utilizes PILOTs, and marketrate housing is still crucial to addressing the issue of housing supply.

Despite this, the primary reason that opponents of COAH cite is cost. According to Senator O’Scanlon, the bill “mandates levels of affordable housing that communities cannot sustain.” Additionally, PILOT projects are profitable for developers. However, part of the reason developers have made so much money is because of lacking auditary standards, which resulted from a COAH paralyzed by constant lawsuits.

Without sufficient audits, developers were able to consistently exploit legal loopholes in their favor. For example, developers could put together the expenses of multiple projects to overstate expenses, thus lowering reported profits to underpaythe city for taxes. This is an issue that A-40/S-50 aims to fix by standardizing the process of constructing affordable housing.

It’s also hypocritical for opponents of A-40/S-50 to cite cost as an issue after spending millions in lawsuits to challenge COAH regulations. Due to these lawsuits, New Jersey is estimated to be 200,000 homes short of meeting basic affordable housing requirements. The actual issue at stake is NIMBYism. The acronym, which stands for “Not In My Backyard,” is a term commonly applied to people who oppose affordable housing out of misconceptions or fear. NIMBYs often oppose change due to perceived risks of crime, strained infrastructure, lowered property values, and changing community character. While many local officials have avoided making statements along these lines, it’s difficult to avoid seeing signs of its influence. The arguments provided against affordable housing are flawed and simply can’t explain the fifty years lawmakers have spent viciously fighting the results of Mount Laurel. However, countless studies have shown that those fears rarely come to pass. For example, a study conducted by Princeton University on Mount Laurel’s affordable housing found that the town’s crime rates, property values, and taxes were similar to the surrounding suburbs, while “the lives of the poor and working-class families who moved there transformed.” Many neighbors were even unaware that affordable housing existed in that area. Despite this, the movement still has strong roots in Princeton itself.

The arguments provided against affordable housing are flawed.

In 2022, the Princeton Coalition for Responsible Development was formed to fight against an affordable housing development on the land of the Princeton Theological Seminary, on the grounds that it would increase traffic. PCRD founder Jo Butler later elaborated with the words, “every day people are at Einstein’s house…then they want to know the way to Oppenheimer’s house. It’s a big draw and we’re going to ruin it. So, does that make me a NIMBY? I guess.”

Ruin it? How? Is Butler still terrified the development might look ugly, despite the project utilizing top of-the-line materials to blend with the surrounding neighborhood? Does Butler believe evil developers seek to bulldoze Einstein’s house? Will increased traffic somehow injure Princeton’s historical value? Or is Butler still afraid of the people who depend on affordable housing? Whatever the case, there’s no adequate way to justify her statement. Though the group has made statements on seeking common ground, its actions directly contradict this. When they were told they couldn’t sue Princeton’s mayor over the housing plan, the group “refused to amend their case” without actually giving a reason why. Additionally, the group has taken issue with nearly every affordable housing development in Princeton and also attempted to halt construction of affordable housing that was agreed upon even before Princeton’s housing plan was created.

The easiest way to take action? Simply learn more about affordable housing. Opponents to affordable housing often rely on vague fear-inducing statements to generate misconceptions. Students should confirm the validity of rumors before spreading them, and research the ways affordable housing has succeeded and failed. Students also have exclusive access to a crucial audience; their parents. Murphy’s bill is New Jersey’s second chance to address the cost of living, and families shouldn’t let local officials use their taxpayer dollars to fight it. By simply engaging in dialogue, students can shine a spotlight on New Jersey’s housing crisis.