PASCACK VALLEY—Woodcliff Lake Mayor Carlos Rendo tells Pascack Press that it is important for Pascack Valley towns to be proactive, not reactive, in creating a new affordable housing system in 2025.
He also wants to see our towns join together to address the impacts of development on the valley as new units are rising due to affordable housing settlements.
“It is incumbent upon us as public officials to help our residents deal with the impacts of development,” Rendo said in late December 2021, noting high-density developments in Park Ridge, Montvale, Emerson, and the Township of Washington.
Local and regional school districts, too, are working to update their understanding of local demographics as an influx of students is anticipated.
A fourth round of affordable housing obligations begins in July 2025, when the third round of obligations ends.
That fourth round will be calculated by either legal (Superior Courts) or legislative action (new laws) passed by the state Assembly, Senate and signed by Gov. Phil Murphy — or possibly the next governor.
Meanwhile, affordable housing and concerns about traffic and development are sure to come up at the next annual “Breakfast with the Greater Pascack Valley Mayors,” sponsored by the Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce, at the Iron Horse in Westwood on Wednesday, Jan. 26 at 8 a.m.
The mayors of all 10 towns in the Greater Pascack Valley are invited to present their annual town updates over breakfast. It’s open to the public.
Each mayor or their representative from Montvale, Park Ridge, Woodcliff Lake, River Vale, Old Tappan, Hillsdale, Washington Township, Westwood, Emerson, and Oradell will answer questions submitted by Chamber members and other attendees.
Tickets may be purchased at pascackchamber.org/event-details/breakfast-with-the-mayors or by contacting Robin Malley at (201) 666-0777 or GPVCOC@gmail.com.
Rendo, a Republican, said area mayors need to “join together” to look at local and regional impacts of development on quality of life issues such as traffic congestion. He said a regional traffic study — for possible use in informing and defending against future high-density affordable developments — should be a priority for area mayors.
And we hear from local officials and others that something done to limit what has been described by critics as a broken system that allows builders to sue — and win — over the right to build high-density housing to satisfy court-imposed affordable obligations.
“It’s getting out of control throughout the entire county and it is being driven by the Fair Share Housing Center,” Rendo recently told Pascack Press.
Fair Share Housing Center is a non-profit that advocates for affordable housing statewide, including as intervenor in most Mount Laurel affordable settlements decided by state Superior Courts.
He said developments’ “ancillary impacts” include added traffic and stormwater, though state stormwater regulations currently require a no-net increase in runoff on any new development.
Asked who should initiate an area traffic study, Rendo suggested Bergen County should work with the county’s 70 towns “to look at the impacts of all the developments coming in.”
While traffic is an ongoing concern, most affordable housing settlements do not allow traffic impacts to be used as a legally defensible rationale to block an affordable project.
Rendo said affordable housing obligations were being forced on the people of New Jersey and a study should be done “to reduce the size and scope” of such housing. Rendo said he was not against affordable housing, just affordable housing that does not fit with a town’s character.
An affordable unit means a sales price or rent for a dwelling that is within the means of:
- Moderate-Income Household (i.e., making 50% to 80% of the regional income limit);
- Low-Income Household (i.e., making less than 50% of the regional income limit); and
- Very-Low-Income Household (i.e., making less than 30% of the regional income limit).
One of the strongest and loudest complaints against affordable housing mandates in New Jersey—and particularly in Bergen County, the state’s most densely populated county — is that it leads to overdevelopment.
On its website, https://fairsharehousing.org, FSHC says “The Mount Laurel Doctrine has led to the development of over 60,000 affordable housing units outside New Jersey’s racially and economically segregated urban centers.”
In May 2021 we interviewed FSHC executive director Adam M. Gordon, who said in part, “Too often when people are opposed to ‘overdevelopment’ what they really mean is that they should close the doors after they moved in,” Gordon said.
He added, “As the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice has compellingly pointed out, ‘Wealth in New Jersey is designed by race, with the median net wealth for white families at $352,000 — the highest in America — but just $6,100 for Black families, and $7,300 for Latina/Latino families, respectively.’”
Gordon said Pascack Valley towns, as in much of the state, have been mixed: “Towns … have taken productive approaches to affordable housing and towns have fought tooth and nail for decades.”
He said, “We’re proud of the work we’ve done to help bring more than 330 towns into compliance, including those in the Pascack Valley, to tackle the scourge of exclusionary zoning and the socioeconomic and racial segregation it causes.”
Gordon said, “We believe that as many of these homes continue to be built, that the sky will not fall, much as generations ago Harrington Park survived when now-Sen. Cory Booker [the first African American U.S. senator from New Jersey] and his family moved there.”
While most municipalities in the Garden State, and all eight we cover in Pascack Valley, have settled their affordable housing obligation through 2025, local officials have started calling for changes in the 1985 state law that mandates affordable housing obligations.
Some critics, including former District 39 Assemblywoman, and now state Senator, Holly Schepisi, have alleged that the FSHC has ties to developers.
Several area mayors went to Trenton recently to plead their case against court-ordered high-density housing to help fulfill affordable obligations.
In summer 2018, Montvale Mayor Michael Ghassali spoke before a state Assembly legislative committee and called for the reinstatement of so-called “regional contribution agreements” while Park Ridge Mayor Keith Misciagna railed against high-density development ordered by courts at the same hearing on affordable housing.
Previously RCAs allowed “sending” suburban towns to provide agreed-upon payments for up to 50 percent of their affordable obligations to “receiving” urban areas to help those areas improve their housing stock. They were outlawed in 2008 for going against the Mount Laurel doctrine that called for affordable housing to be built throughout all New Jersey communities.
In 2018, Ghassali told Pascack Press then that race “has nothing to do with” affordable housing after a Fair Share Housing Center representative had referred to the low percentage of African-Americans residing in certain towns, including Montvale and Park Ridge.
Ghassali said that Montvale is home to families from at least 44 nations of origin.
At the 2018 hearing, suggested reforms included reinvigorating the Council on Affordable Housing; restarting the use of “regional contribution agreements”; and ending “builder’s remedy” lawsuits, a process created by New Jersey’s Supreme Court that allows a builder to sue a municipality that has not met its affordable housing obligation.
If a builder wins, the builder must provide one affordable unit for every five units built, often leading to high-density developments to help a town meet its affordable obligations.
Other suggestions then included increasing the ratio of affordable units that must be built along with “market-rate” units to 30% (from 20%) to reducing the number of total units to be built; and implementing a moratorium on affordable housing obligations until the Legislature develops new rules.
None of the reforms were adopted.
Rendo was the Republican ticket’s 2017 nominee for Lieutenant Governor, running with gubernatorial candidate Kim Guadagno, who lost to Murphy in the 2017 race, 56% to 42%.
— With John Snyder