PASCACK VALLEY—Two of nine area mayors attending the Pascack Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce annual mayors breakfast on Jan. 26 said that they would work to bring together a coalition of mayors and other officials toward a strategic regional approach to affordable housing obligations that start back up in July 2025.
Woodcliff Lake Mayor Carlos Rendo said, “There’s pressures of development and Fair Share Housing [Center] is moving forward to create more affordable housing.”
He added, “But we should have a regional strategy ahead of it to address these types of pressures because we cannot sustain continued developments of high-density development. And we have avenues to challenge, and also work with Fair Share Housing.”
The Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce (GPVCOC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit composed of business organizations and professionals cooperating to enhance our community. The breakfast, which had been set for a return to the venerable Iron Horse Restaurant in Westwood, with donations asked to support the chamber’s work, was diverted over Covid for a second year to Zoom, at no cost to the public to attend.
Mayors were invited from Montvale, Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake, River Vale, Old Tappan, Hillsdale, Washington Township, Westwood, Emerson, and Oradell. All attended except for River Vale Mayor Glen Jaisonowski and Westwood Mayor Ray Arroyo, though Arroyo provided a full report of what he had planned to say (see related stories).
The leaders provided updates on a range of topics, including developments, business growth, traffic, Covid-19, outdoor dining, and airplane noise. We focused on affordable housing here, but we’ll report on additional facets of this meeting in the days to come. (And you can see the session in full. See How to Watch the Session courtesy volunteers of Washington Community Television.)
Affordable housing dominates
Rendo noted a regional committee might provide strategies and solutions to address affordable housing.
Oradell Mayor Dianne Didio also said she would raise a similar question at the upcoming Bergen County League of Municipalities session to gauge towns’ interest in forming an intermunicipal group.
Both Rendo — president of Pascack Valley Mayors Association — and Didio — president of the Bergen County League of Municipalities — said they would speak to their respective groups about forming a regional task force to seek collective actions to be taken in advance of new affordable housing obligations to be imposed in July 2025.
Several mayors jumped on Rendo’s suggestion, picking up on a hot-button topic that’s been conflated with concern for overdevelopment and impacts on traffic, taxes, quality of life, and school enrollment.
We reported in early January on Rendo’s call for Pascack Valley towns to be proactive in creating a new affordable housing system in 2025, the year when current round obligations expire and new obligations are due to be calculated. (See “Mayor Urges New Affordable Housing System,” Pascack Press, Jan. 3, 2022.)
The subject has a rich and lively history here, and it’s ongoing. In 2015, the state Supreme Court transferred all affordable housing obligations statewide to state Superior Courts following 16 years of inaction and infighting by the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), which had failed to approve a formula to determine local affordable obligations.
Nearly a decade after the original Mount Laurel decision, the state Fair Housing Act mandating affordable housing was passed by the legislature and signed into law in 1985. That law created COAH, which was to determine local affordable obligations every six years.
However, lawsuits against COAH and its failure to enforce affordable obligations led to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to turn over affordable obligations to state Superior Courts.
Rendo said the 2025 affordable housing “challenges” will be here soon.
He said he considered himself a “beneficiary” of affordable housing when he lived in a Union City apartment that was kept affordable via rent control.
He said he “welcomed” affordable housing but not the market-rate units that come with high-density affordable units.
He said he was “all for developing affordable housing in our area” but wanted the developments kept to affordable housing units only. “Let’s see if the developers are willing to provide that,” he said, asking if developers are willing to build affordable units without market-rate units.
He suggested mentioning this alternative to FSHC, noting otherwise towns are likely to be hit with more large developments. “That should be part of the strategy for addressing this issue.”
He cited Park Ridge’s years-long battle against Hornrock Properties (AR Landmark) over a 30-acre former Sony property that was settled in 2020 by a Superior Court decision mandating a 448-unit development, with 68 affordable units.
He said that the “builder’s remedy” legal maneuver used by developers against towns not in compliance with Mount Laurel gives developers, “the hammer and municipalities have their backs up against the wall in terms of combatting this.”
Hillsdale Mayor John Ruocco said that more development also leads to more flooding due to more impervious surface. He said smaller towns were being squeezed and noted the Pascack Valley Mayors Association was also trying to take a regional approach to flooding issues.
Montvale Mayor Michael Ghassali agreed that Pascack Valley towns need to come together to address affordable housing. “We discussed this, we keep discussing this…if we address this separately it won’t be as serious and as efficient as if we come together.”
He said Pascack and Northern valley towns should join together. “And you’d [then] have some serious resources behind it…2025, the fourth round, we’re expecting to be hammered again and we’re going to try to fight but fighting alone is going to be difficult.”
Park Ridge Mayor Keith Misciagna said “the whole system with affordable housing is broken.” He called the initial purpose of affordable housing “an honorable idea” and said that COAH should be reinstated, “and they should do it better because it’s a broken system. It doesn’t work,” said the mayor.
He said Park Ridge, which fought builder’s remedy in court, “took our turn in the dunk tank. It was a terrible couple of years and the state needs to get involved with this and change it because it’s broken.”
Misciagna said that people frequently ask him why a retired resident on a modest income does not get preference for an affordable housing unit. He said “there’s no avenue to do that and it’s shame, there should be.”
Ruocco reminded Misciagna that resident preferences were not a priority for affordable housing advocates. “Their goals are a little different, it wasn’t so much to provide affordable housing to your residents, as they age, in Park Ridge, but to provide affordable housing on a much broader scale to people in other neighborhoods, elsewhere in the state, to come in and to move into Park Ridge. That was one of their goals. I’m not saying I agree with it but that was one of their goals.”
Misciagna said “it’s become one of their goals” and charged that the original Mount Laurel decision “wasn’t about that” but to “build 4-acre sites with mansions on it and they said ‘no’ you can’t do that.”
He said he was in favor of affordable housing but it was “supposed to be about income and not anything else…I hope by 2025 we’re better prepared as a group because we learned a lot.”
Rendo said Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s environmental policies on climate change seems to conflict with increased affordable housing via multifamily, high-density developments.
He said affordable developments built in flood zones would run counter to environmental policies.
According to Fair Share Housing Center’s website, the 1975 Mount Laurel decision was based on Mount Laurel Township’s exclusionary zoning of the poor.
For an affordable housing timeline in New Jersey and more information, visit fairsharehousing.org.
How to watch the session
Washington Community Television streamed the meeting, and you can see it: According to WCTV’s Emily Kratzer:
- You can view “Breakfast with the Mayors” on Verizon FiOS Channel 24 in many New Jersey towns and Optimum channel 77 in Washington Township and Westwood on Friday, Jan. 28 and Saturday, Jan. 30 at noon and 4 and 8 p.m.
- All our programs and digital bulletin board are simulcast on the Local BTV app which is FREE. Download the app at LocalBTV.com, scroll to “Community,” and select WCTV to watch on a phone, tablet, computer or Roku and Firestick, anywhere in the NY/NJ metropolitan area.
- Optimum subscribers can watch on Tuesday, Feb. 8 and 15 at 7 p.m. on channel 76, which airs in all of northern New Jersey.
- The video is on our YouTube page — WCTVNJ — so that you can link it to your town’s website and social media.