Township Passes Fair Housing Laws Update

The Bernards Township Committee unanimously passed an amendment to the town's fair housing laws at an emergency meeting early Saturday morning.

Per state law, the town had until Sunday, June 27 to adopt the amended fair housing ordinance, which lawmakers said was a routine updating of Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) laws that would have little day-to-day impact on the town's 225 units of affordable housing.

"It's mostly wordsmithing, it got rid of the old ordinances that are superseded by this one," said Peter Messina, the township engineer and planner who is also the town's Municipal Housing Liaison responsible for the oversight and administration of the town's affordable housing program.

The meeting started at 8 a.m. and was over in 12 minutes. John Carpenter was absent and John Malay called in on the telephone to cast his vote.

Messina said two years ago the town passed a similar ordinance, simply updating its fair housing laws.

The ordinance states that the town has an obligation to provide affordable homes to people with low and moderate incomes, as well as to market them to "buyers and/or renters of all majority and minority groups."

A company called the Somerset County Coalition on Affordable Housing handles both marketing Basking Ridge's moderate and low income homes as well as verifying whether applicants meet the income requirements, Messina said. He added that the town used to have an employee who did those jobs, but when that person left the job was hired out to SCCOAH.

Messina said the town's affordable housing units are mixed in with market rate units in three areas, Society Hill, Cedar's Development and Crown Court.  He added that each unit is full.

Though they are not part of the town's obligations under the state's fair housing laws, he added that Bernards Township has plans to subsidize a group home built by the YMCA as well as 20 more senior housing units at Ridge Oak.

The town had scheduled a public meeting on the updated housing ordinance on July 13, but state law required that the town pass the ordinance by Sunday. Mayor Scott Spitzer said he didn't want to jeopardize the city's efforts complying with the housing laws by missing the deadline.

"Given all the work we've done and all the efforts at compliance we would be remiss if we didn't bring it across the goal line before deadline," he said.

He said had the town missed the deadline, "the consequences would have been dramatic."

He also called the deadline an example of COAH's "inflexible" laws and said he hoped the state legislature would alter them.

"We believe that COAH will be significantly changed or abandoned through new legislation in Trenton," he said.

Todd Edelstein, who rode to the meeting on his motorcycle, was the lone member of the public in attendance. He tried to question the council after the vote about what the bill meant, but was reminded that the time for public questions about the bill happened before the vote.

"I'm not really sure what changed," Edelstein said.