Affordable housing has been back in the news since March, when the state Supreme Court shifted affordable housing oversight from the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) back to the judiciary. With municipalities obligated to provide affordable housing under the state constitution, both Plainsboro and West Windsor are presenting their plans to the courts (see sidebar, page 11).
But what constitutes “affordable” housing, and who ends up living in it? For those who think that affordable housing is an enclave of indigent people one step away from homelessness, the reality may be surprising.
West Windsor affordable housing committee chair Jean Jacobsohn says the origin of affordable housing in New Jersey was to ensure that emergency responders and teachers could live where they worked. That was the basis of the Mount Laurel court case, and the judiciary subsequently broadened the availability.
“It is intended to help people who are below the average in income, not people who are on welfare,” Jacobsohn says. “I think most people think there is a benefit to having a variety and diversity in your housing. You don’t shut people out so they can’t have housing that they cannot afford.”
In fact, two volunteer members of West Windsor’s affordable housing committee — George Thompson and Patricia Verdino — are themselves residents of affordable housing.
Thompson, 74, lives in the Hamlet at Bear Creek, a 61-unit affordable housing development near Grover Middle School. An age-restricted community, the Hamlet comprises single story, one-bedroom units (Verdino is also a resident of the Hamlet). In 2002 Thompson moved from his $820 per month apartment in Robbinsville to his current affordable residence. The rent was $525 per month then, now $569, and Thompson has no plans to leave.
“People leave this place in a hearse or an ambulance,” Thompson says. “The original concept was to allow residents to save up for a house, give some time to get back on your feet. This has turned into a retirement community.”
In addition to the $1,700 a month from Social Security, Thompson also works 30 hours a week at the Springdale Golf Club. Since his job mowing fairways at Springdale is seasonal, he collects unemployment during the winter months. He also has a modest pension from his stint working at IBM. While he’s not penniless, his level of income makes him eligible for affordable housing. Given the high cost of housing in central New Jersey, a family of four can have an annual income up to $74,000 and still be eligible for moderate income level housing.
All told, Thompson considers himself a member of the middle class, a group that has struggled to keep up with rising living costs. He estimates his Social Security could cover a market-rate apartment, but after medicine there wouldn’t be anything left.
“If you’re making $50,000 a year, you’re spending all your money keeping your head above water,” Thompson says. “We cannot let affordable housing go by the wayside. I can deal with food, buy a cheaper car, but you have to have a place to live near where the jobs are.”
Thompson has lived in the area for more than 60 years, and he has seen the escalating acreage costs developers pay to farmers. Those developers do not then turn around and build cheap housing.
“The middle class and lower middle class got caught in a lurch. For years and years you could work and get by. Now you can’t do that. You’re either wealthy or struggling,” Thompson says. “What cracks me up is when I hear people say they’ve been living here 20 years and they don’t want more housing. I’ve been living here since the 1950s, and I don’t want anyone of you here. Growth is always going to happen. You can’t build a town of houses just for rich people.”
Before moving to rural central New Jersey in 1951, Thompson grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan, on 178th street. While still in elementary school, his family relocated to Hightstown after his father, a theater manager for RKO, was transferred to downtown Trenton. His mother was a bookkeeper.
Back then Hightstown had a population under 2,500, and the locals spoke with what sounded to Thompson like a Southern accent. He recalls making 20 cents an hour one high school summer hauling irrigation pipes on Kippy Britton’s potato farm. Moving 100-pound potato bags paid better, 50 cents an hour, but the bags were too heavy.
After graduating from Hightstown High School in 1959, Thompson enlisted in the Navy, and he served on the destroyer USS Rich before returning to central Jersey in 1964.
That year Thompson married and eventually found work at the IBM facility in Dayton. He started out as a dishwasher, and three months later was promoted to maintenance, where he replaced fluorescent lights. Three months after that he was promoted to the production line, where he made key punch cards used in early computers.
“IBM took care of you cradle to grave. They didn’t want a union. We got raises every year, and medical covered everything,” Thompson says. “We had dinner at the Waldorf Astoria for 200 factory workers because they thought we liked it. Yeah we liked it, I had turtle soup for the first time.”
After seven years in production, Thompson moved over to the office side. Called in to serve as an emergency bartender for a company party hosted by Roy Platt, an IBM executive, Thompson went straight from the assembly line to Platt’s house. At the party, Mrs. Platt noticed the ink and dye stains on his hands, a result from working on the production lines, and had him transferred to the office building across the street from the factory.
“I had a flunky little job in the office, and went from last guy in the office to middle guy in the office because the boss knew I was Platt’s bartender.”
Outside of work, Thompson volunteered for the Hightstown fire company for 17 years. Thompson also served on Hightstown Borough Council in the 1970s, where he was one of the first Democrats elected in many years.
The volunteer fire department provided general emergency services from New Brunswick to Bordentown. Thompson served as captain and was elected president of the organization.
“I ran because I thought there needed to be changes,” Thompson says. “There were no blacks, Jews, or women in the fire company. I formed a committee and changed the admission criteria so a majority had to vote no in order to reject someone, instead of just three black balls. I was a New Yorker, I wasn’t used to this stuff.”
Under Thompson, the fire company welcomed its first woman and African-American. “You attract more bees with honey than vinegar. Be nice to everybody, and once I was elected president, then I did what I wanted,” he says.
In the early 1980s, a divorce and dissatisfaction with office work led Thompson to leave IBM after nearly 20 years there. He quickly landed on his feet as a bus washer at the Twin Rivers terminal.
“I didn’t want to die in the office,” Thompson says. “I went from a three-piece suit, $160 shoes, $250 suit to jeans and sneakers. They all thought I was nuts.”
Later on he worked as a bartender at Cranbury Golf Club, transitioning to the grounds crew in 1984. Thompson has been working on golf courses ever since, spending five years at Cranbury and then 10 years at the Peddie School golf course before starting at Springdale in 2001.
“At the Springdale Christmas parties I call myself the senior fairway mower. The guests ask me whether I’m in charge, and I say no, I’m the oldest guy.”
Thompson has two daughters, Patty, a paralegal, and Cathleen, a pediatric office manager, and two granddaughters, Sarah and Fiona. Coincidentally, Patty’s fiance, John Oliver, and Sarah’s husband, Paul Grasselli, both work in West Windsor’s Public Works department. They all live in New Jersey.
The affordable housing development Thompson lives in, Hamlet at Bear Creek, is owned by Matt Gallagher and is overseen by D&M Management Company, based in Freehold. In Thompson’s first year there, residents did not pay for sewer, gas, and water. He has since had his fridge and hot water heater replaced, though the renter pays for broken windows.
Renters also have to re-certify every year. West Windsor’s affordable housing qualifications are calculated based on the township’s tri-county median income. For Mercer, Monmouth, and Ocean counties, the one person median income is $64,840, and $74,091 for two people. For six people the median income is $107,432. To qualify for affordable housing, applicants must fall below 50 percent of the median income for low income housing, and below 80 percent for moderate income affordable housing. In the case of a single person such as Thompson, the moderate income limit is $51,872.
This is Thompson’s third year serving on the affordable housing committee. Recently the committee and senior center have been discussing the prospect of hiring a social worker to aid the township’s seniors and visit them at their homes. The committee reviews development plans and verifies the proposed affordable units to ensure there are no deficits or problems. Currently the committee is hosting a program to assist affordable housing homeowners in purchasing hot water heaters and new windows, using money from the affordable housing funds.
One misconception that frustrates Thompson is the tendency to conflate all affordable housing with Section 8 housing, a government housing program that provides very low income families with vouchers for private rental properties.
“People assume others from Newark, Camden, Trenton are coming to West Windsor,” Thompson says. “It’s not about the lowest income.”
Another misconception concerns who pays for the low and moderate income housing. Jacobsohn notes that funding for affordable housing construction is paid for by the housing developers, not by current residents. Developers pay into the affordable housing fund, and residential construction must include a certain proportion of affordable units. One side effect for incoming residents is affordable unit obligations may increase the price of market-rate units.
Property taxes are built into the rent, and sale units pay property tax at the lower assessed rate. However, sale units cannot sell at market rate, and affordable unit residents cannot sublease rooms.
Of course, residents are concerned with any increase in school children that accompanies residential development. According to Jacobsohn, most units are one or two bedroom, which do not produce a lot of children. In other words, affordable housing units do not significantly increase the number of children. However, developers seeking to maximize housing units can tie affordable housing obligations to larger overall housing development, which is what happened in the builder’s remedy lawsuit that led to the Estates at Princeton Junction development.
Having spent nearly all of his time in the Navy cooking and cleaning, Thompson keeps his one-bedroom unit squeaky clean. He enjoys living in the quiet neighborhood, and he has even added a flower garden to the small front yard.
Affordable housing allows him to live close to his job in Princeton, in the area where he has lived most of his life. Providing such housing is fair, he says, because even after serving in the military, working for IBM, and then on golf courses, he simply cannot compete with the wealthy. Not everyone can be wealthy or be in a position to attain advanced education. It is not opposition to, or envy of, the more affluent.
“I can afford things, I can’t afford expensive things. If all the housing is expensive, that’s not fair,” Thompson says. “I’m not a dirtbag poor person who’s never held a job. I’m a guy busting his butt all my life, and I can’t afford things because they got so expensive. Some say move elsewhere? Where do you want me to go? How far do I have to go to find affordable housing?”
“We don’t want to spend our lives working, but you can’t price us out of the world.”
