Dive Brief:
- A New Jersey judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by 27 municipalities over a state law mandating that localities boost affordable housing production. The municipalities’ complaints “fail to state a legal claim,” according to the Sept. 30 decision by Mercer County Judge Robert Lougy.
- The 2024 state law is designed to enforce New Jersey’s Mount Laurel Doctrine, a nearly 50-year-old state constitutional requirement that every locality “provide its fair share of affordable housing.” The mandate establishes deadlines for municipalities to meet affordable housing obligations.
- Montvale, New Jersey, Mayor Mike Ghassali vowed to appeal the court’s decision to the appellate division in a social media post. “The trial court’s rogue decision held that municipalities and mayors cannot even challenge the affordable housing process because it is optional,” Ghassali stated. “We are appealing because there is nothing optional about mandating hundreds of thousands of new units in our communities.”
Dive Insight:
New Jersey is facing an affordable housing shortfall of roughly 200,000 units. Housing advocates say streamlining the Mount Laurel Doctrine will fill that gap.
“By establishing new processes and practices for towns to meet their Mount Laurel affordable housing obligations, we are able to more quickly and efficiently allocate funding to municipalities and support those building affordable housing in our state,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said last year when he signed S-50, the bill “establishing a new, streamlined framework for determining and enforcing municipalities’ affordable housing obligations.”
The affordable housing quotas are based on population changes in each region of the state each decade, according to the mandate.
S-50 “was crafted with input from all relevant parties in a respectful effort to work with municipalities and give them the tools and support they need to fulfill their affordable housing obligations,” State Sen. Troy Singleton said in a statement lauding the court’s dismissal. “A vast majority of towns have participated in the process and accepted their reasonable obligations – far more than at any other point in the past five decades of Mount Laurel.”
Ghassali said he anticipates “a multi-year effort to fight 50 years of disastrous Mount Laurel Doctrine law.”
“Our consortium of over 30 municipalities, representing over half a million New Jerseyans, looks forward to bringing this case to the Appellate Division while continuing our equal protection challenge in federal district court,” he stated.
