Legislative Briefing: Affordable Housing Reform: New Jersey A4

JOSHUA MILLER

23, January 2025

New Jersey's Assembly Bill A4 represents a landmark effort to comply with the Mount Laurel Doctrine and the state's growing affordable housing crisis by reforming how municipalities meet their fair share housing obligations. At the heart of this legislation is a standardized formula that requires each municipality to calculate its present and prospective affordable housing needs, along with other factors like population growth, land, and income capacity. By decentralizing housing planning, A4 shifts responsibility to local governments from the state and gives them a ten-year window to meet their fair share housing obligations.

While A4 provides a more equitable framework by using a formula that should create more affordable housing in wealthier suburban areas, its implementation poses significant challenges. First, municipalities may have varying capacities to meet these obligations, and suburban towns have raised concerns about overburdening their resources and infrastructure. Suburban towns complaining about providing their fair share of affordable housing is not new. However, A4 removes centralized oversight and relies on localized enforcement, increasing the likelihood of inconsistencies in compliance across municipalities and delays in housing the state's most vulnerable populations. These challenges highlight the need for robust state oversight and consistent monitoring to ensure the law's success. With these hurdles, it is important to critically examine A4 to ensure the law will work as intended and finally provide affordable housing that has been denied in the state for the fifty-year history of the Mount Laurel doctrine.

Continue reading the legislative briefing in its entirety below:

Legislative Briefing: Affordable Housing Reform: New Jersey A4