January 17, 2011 – (RealEstateRama) — After adding a technical amendment on Monday, both the State Senate (on a vote of 21 in favor and 16 opposed) and the General Assembly (45-32) passed S-1, which would abolish the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and transfer its duties to the Department of Community Affairs (DCA). The bill includes further substantive and procedural reforms relating to the provision of sufficient safe and affordable housing.
The bill increases the obligation for affordable housing from COAH’s gross obligation of approximately 190,000 units to 230,000. In the first ten-year housing cycle contemplated by S-1, the number of units required is estimated at 48,491. In the second ten-year housing cycle, as the bill stated prior to the last minute amendment, that number would have doubled to 97,375.
We alerted all State Senators of this dramatic increase in obligation on Monday morning, January 10, 2011. As a result, sometime late on that same day, a technical amendment was made to the bill allowing part of that second housing cycle obligation to be carried over to the third ten-year housing cycle. We were not made aware of the change until the evening of January 10, after the vote in both houses.
We have recalculated the numbers based upon the technical amendment. The second ten-year housing cycle obligation, in the bill adopted by the Senate and Assembly, will rise from the first cycle of 48,491 to approximately 62,647 affordable units, with 37,300 carried over into the third housing cycle. The computation of these numbers is based upon housing stock existing as of 2010, and does not take into account the additional obligation that would be required by future housing growth.
You can access our analysis of your affordable housing obligations, under the terms of S-1, at http://www.njslom.org/letters/Housing-Obligations-Under-S1-Compliance-Periods-01-08-11.pdf. And to understand the methodology we used to arrive at those figures, we have posted an explanatory letter, which we had provided to State Senators yesterday. (Please note. That explanation did not account for the final technical amendment.) The letter can be accessed at http://www.njslom.org/letters/Affordable-Housing-calculation-011011.pdf.
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For further information contact: William G. Dressel, Jr., Executive Director at
(609) 695-3481, extension 122 or 609-915-9072.
