Plan encourages never-ending development
In the complex debate over affordable housing, our choice of words confuses the issue - our problem isn't affordable housing, it's affordable land. Throughout the country, more than half of all Americans now live within 50 miles of an ocean - and more are on the way. That's why land prices are skyrocketing.

Monmouth County, blessed with wonderful rivers, bays and the ocean, is no exception. Building lots that once cost as little as $25,000 a few decades ago now hover at the $200,000+ mark. Affordable housing advocates are rightly concerned that a growing portion of our population can't afford a home in our county.

The New Jersey Supreme Court in 1975 ruled in its Mount Laurel decision that municipalities could not zone against lowand moderate-income housing.

Later, the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) was created to assess housing needs, determine each municipality's quota, and make sure officials tow the line.

Still, builders avoided affordable housing because of low profit margins, while elected officials feared municipal costs for additional police, fire, roads and especially schools would outstrip the "affordables" tax revenues.

Then COAH adopted its carrot and-stick "inclusionary" methodology, which now requires one affordable house for every five new "market-priced" houses.

In addition, COAH mandates one affordable housing unit for every 16 new jobs created by non-residential development. In effect, local officials now promote new development to subsidize their affordable housing quotas.

Sounds like "win-win" doesn't it? Hardly. COAH's inclusionary plan will exacerbate the affordable housing problem, not improve it.

Increased development bids up the price of New Jersey's limited land. Development also increases taxes, a fact that developers deny and ratablechasing politicians ignore even though nationwide studies and New Jersey's own experience prove it is true.

Let's look at schooling. According to COAH's slide rule, we need 115,000 affordable units (twice previous estimates) by 2018. Using the inclusionary remedy, we would need 700,000 new market-priced homes. These 815,000 units - a builder's dream - could produce up to:

• 1.63 million students who would require 65,200 more classrooms (two students x 815,000 units = 1.63 million students ÷ by 25 students in a class)

• $14.67 billion in yearly operating costs (1.63 million students x an average $9,000 a year) and $138 billion in new schools (1.63 million students x $85,000 per desk).

These 815,000 mandated houses also would cost additional billions for new roads and bridges, sewers, police, fire and rescue, while increasing land, air, and water pollution. The result - a taxpayer's nightmare.

In addition, COAH's rulemaking also:

• Ignores state-mandated land management plans, such as the Highlands and Pinelands plans

• Relies on old DEP plans for designated growth areas that don't comply with current environmental standards

• Restricts to about 6 percent the acreage we can set aside to protect sensitive natural resources or develop parklands, and

• Promotes development in environmentally sensitive rural areas where there are too few jobs, no public transportation and minimal infrastructure.

COAH's ill planning encourages a never-ending cycle of development, increased property taxes, higher land costs and truncated open space programs that will cause today's affordable housing to become quite unaffordable tomorrow.

COAH needs a better plan - and a crash course in economics.
Judith Stanley Coleman
President
Monmouth Conservation
Foundation
Middletown