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BY MICHAEL OLOHAN
OF PASCACK PRESS
Montvale, New Jersey—Following a hearing in Trenton where a housing advocacy representative alleged that five towns whose mayors appeared there— including Montvale—used zoning laws to exclude people with disabilities as well as Latinos and African Americans, Montvale’s mayor called his remarks “disparaging and unfair.”
Following the hearing, Montvale Mayor Michael Ghassali said he did not have an opportunity to respond to “disparaging and unfair” comments made by Fair Share Housing Center Executive Director Kevin Walsh. Ghassali sent a letter sent to Pascack Press—and numerous state officials—and on Aug. 8 Ghassali appeared in a six-minute interview segment on NJTV disputing Walsh’s comments.
Reached Aug. 9 following his letter and public television appearance, Ghassali said he “took offense” with Walsh’s comment that Montvale was a racist town. He said Montvale has complied with its affordable housing obligations and is not racist at all.
At the legislative hearing held in late July, Walsh criticized mayors of five towns for their low number of African American residents, generally between 1 to 2 percent of the total population.
‘Walsh targeted Montvale’
Ghassali said Walsh “specifically targeted Montvale by suggesting that our opposition to the current affordable housing process was racially motivated…Affordable housing is not and never has been an issue for only specific minority groups; it is an issue for all economically disadvantaged residents in this state.”
“The Borough will affirmatively market its affordable units, as required by law, but will have no control over who occupies those units—as you well know,” Ghassali wrote, addressing Walsh’s charges.
Montvale’s affordable housing settlement was approved Jan. 25 in Superior Court and calls for 106 or 615 new housing units being built to be set aside for low- and moderate-income families. The plan comprises agreements with four interveners in the settlement—Fair Share Housing Center and three developers—ending almost two years of litigation and negotiation among all parties.
The housing developments will occur on three sites: the Mercedes-Benz USA site, owned by S. Hekemian Group; the Sony property, owned by Hornrock properties; and the former A&P campus, owned by 2 Paragon Drive LLC, its purchaser.
A school planning committee to consider future school upgrades to accommodate new students was formed following the approval. The committee met once, Ghassali said recently.
‘Score political points’
“Since you raised the issue of race, I would like to point out that according to 2010 census data, the African American population in Montvale more than doubled from 2000 to 2010. The Asian population more than doubled to 11 percent. The Hispanic population increased by more than 70 percent to 5.34 percent. Moreover, according to data from the latest ACS Survey, the population of all three of these groups continue to increase in Montvale. Your singular focus on one statistic about the African American population was misleading and was clearly intended to disparage Montvale to score political points,” Ghassali wrote.
“My opposition to this process has nothing to do with race and everything to do with non-functioning bureaucracies and the delegation of this issue to a court system that is ill-equipped to handle it. The system also gives far too much power and influence to for-profit developers and interest groups, to the detriment of communities and their residents,” Ghassali added.
In his letter, Ghassali said that Walsh’s comments “had been publicized and shown on the local news (NJTV News) “and as a result I feel compelled to respond in writing.”
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Ghassali on TV
Ghassali appeared Aug. 8 on NJTV in an almost six-minute one-on-one interview with reporter Michael Hill.
Asked if there was some “racial underpinning” to Montvale’s “complicity” with other towns resisting affordable housing, Ghassali said: “That’s where the disconnect is. Race has nothing to do with it. Affordable housing is not for any one single race. Affordable housing is for all races. That’s where I have an issue with Mr. Walsh. And that’s where I sent him that letter. He called Montvale a racist town for having 1 percent or less African Americans,” said Ghassali. “We are building, we have shovels in the ground right now as we speak. We are building 550 affordable units,” he added.
Ghassali said Montvale was being “force fed by the courts and Fair Share Housing on how many to build and the developers are supporting that.”
He later noted that “we don’t want to double the size of one town and vacate one town. We don’t want to do social engineering moving one group of people from one section of the state and move it to different section of the state. What’s going to happen now to the town that’s all vacant? We’re not helping anything,” he said.
He later told NJTV that resistance to affordable housing was based on “the density and the timing and being force-fed that you have to do this or else you go to court.”
“Montvale is an inclusive community and will continue to be so. We are proud of the fact that we have residents from 44 different countries who speak 22 different languages. I myself was born in Syria and immigrated to the United States in 1980. In 2015, I became, to my knowledge, the first Syrian Christian mayor elected in the United States,” he wrote.
“As such, I take particular offense to your suggestion that either my own statements or the actions taken by my hometown—a town willing to elect and embrace a foreign-born immigrant as their Mayor—have been motivated by race. Nothing could be further than the truth,” wrote Ghassali.
Fair Share responds
A spokesman for Fair Share Housing Center said that what Ghassali and other suburban mayors who appeared at the July 25 hearing are asking “is to essentially stop the production of all affordable housing in the state.”
Anthony Campisi said that while Ghassali may be offended about Walsh’s racist characterization, “there are hundreds of thousands of New Jersey residents who deserve the opportunity to live in a prosperous community.”
He said Montvale’s 2010 U.S. census revealed 81 African American residents of about 7,800 residents.
“To say that just happened by accident is ignoring a long history of racial segregation. Towns years ago put restrictive covenants on properties; once those were declared illegal, towns started using zoning as a way to segregate towns,” Campisi said. “Affordable housing exists in Montvale because Montvale was forced to come to the table and provide its ‘fair share’ of affordable housing,” he added.
Efforts to reach Kevin Walsh for comment were not returned by press time.
A Fair Share Housing Center employee confirmed a letter from Ghassali arrived Aug. 9 at the center’s Cherry Hill address.
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