Bad tax policy is driving poor housing policy
The state Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) was set up to make rules for communities to follow in building housing to comply with the Mount Laurel decision. Recently, rules made by COAH were overturned by the courts. COAH has now proposed new rules, which are a step in the right direction.

At a hearing on the new COAH-proposed rules held in February at the Monmouth County Library Headquarters in Manalapan, I testified as to my concerns:

"Other people have talked about the affordable housing crisis we are experiencing. I would like to talk about how we have gotten here. What I am about to say may seem to be a digression, but I believe it is highly pertinent to this subject.

"I am very troubled by New Jersey's tax policy. I would like to talk about school taxes as an example of what is wrong with our state's policies. The following is a simplified (possibly oversimplified) discussion, but it illustrates my point.

"Most of our schools are primarily financed through municipal property taxes. As a result of this, most municipal governments try to find ways to limit the number of families with children in their communities. Wealthy towns with small numbers of schoolchildren tend to have low tax rates; poorer towns with more schoolchildren tend to have higher tax rates.

"Other states have found ways to deal with this problem. Vermont has a statewide property tax to finance their schools. This basically taxes all of the properties in the state at the same rate, so that people in towns with more schoolchildren don't have to pay higher tax rates. This goes a long way toward stopping the competition among municipalities to send families with schoolchildren elsewhere.

"In New Jersey, Gov. James Florio raised income taxes with the intent of using the increased revenue to help out the schools in the poorer school districts. Florio was not re-elected. His tax increase was reversed and the amount of help for poorer towns was minimized. All of our politicians are now afraid to raise taxes, even when this is necessary.

"School taxes are just one example of why towns compete with each other to avoid having low-income people (especially those with children). They also compete to have wealthier people without children. Most towns prefer to have high-priced housing and age-restricted housing to having affordable housing. This has become a disaster for low- and very-low-income people. Nobody wants them.

"What we have here is a state government in which bad tax policy drives bad housing policy. We need very-low-, low- and moderate-income people in our society. More than this, we have an obligation to treat them fairly. Making bad housing policy as a way of coping with bad tax policy is not only irrational, it is profoundly immoral."
Bill Nordahl
Long Branch