Not a day passes by that I don’t have a conversation with a West Windsor resident about the increasing development and traffic issues in town.
This circles back to trying to meet West Windsor’s affordable housing obligation. The fact is that West Windsor is committed to meeting its legal obligation, but is it fair that existing residents’ quality of life be grossly compromised by the resulting overdevelopment and sprawl?
Get out of work at any time after 5 p.m., and you’re bound to get stuck in traffic trying to weave your way around town. As West Windsor gets ready to meet its third round obligation for affordable housing (for the period 2015-2025), the landscape is bound to change and will start resembling an urban area as high density developments start to crop up.
The school district is holding a $115 million bond referendum in November to finance the building of additional school capacity to absorb the increased enrolment the district is likely to see as the new developments start to get populated.
Unfortunately, this is not the only negative impact of increased development. The more hugely insidious effect is on our taxes. Since most of the new development consists of high-density housing, increased infrastructure, and school costs are not matched by tax flows from apartments and townhomes due to lower assessments leading to tax increases.
In turn, these increased property taxes force our own lower income taxpayers out of the community (e.g. seniors) and replaces them with younger families. Those younger families bring more children into the schools, which further compounds the problem since the lost empty nesters were previously school subsidizers (by definition).
New Jersey municipalities will collectively look back at this issue as one of the most complex and all-consuming issues from both a financial and quality of life standpoint.
The failure of the legislature to resolve this issue for the benefit of its municipalities has spawned a whole industry of lawyers and consultants. West Windsor saw its litigation fees skyrocket since 2015 and has budgeted $200,000 for 2018 to meet the affordable housing litigation fees to dispute the court’s ruling.
If history is any indication, it will lose all of that amount. Our tax dollars are going towards our efforts at trying to get a fair treatment in this issue. Unless our good faith efforts are recognized by the courts, the township is likely to be faced with builders’ remedy lawsuits further engaging our tax dollars.
The irony of meeting this obligation in our town is also that we cannot allot any of these affordable units to our own residents, and there’s also a cap on credit that we can get for senior housing, even though there may be seniors and others in our town who have a genuine need.
There’s also no credit available for abandoned property that might be revamped for affordable units. The latter would be an empowering initiative for a township in meeting the obligation.
Legislation has been floated in the state Assembly to revamp this process. As residents concerned about the impact of chaotic policy surrounding this issue, it behooves us to put pressure on our elected officials at the state level to do the job that they were elected to do— i.e. pass legislation that would benefit their constituents.
I recently attended the public hearing for the state assembly’s housing committee and added my voice to those of others appealing the overhaul of the affordable housing process across the state. This is the first hearing that the committee has held on this issue.
The speakers consisted of mayors, council members and private citizens. Like me, they were calling for a rational approach to the affordable housing issue that does not penalize towns by way of high litigation fees, builders’ remedy lawsuits, sprawl and the general loss of an opportunity to make decisions with respect to their own lands.
This is a critical issue for our town and one whose resolution will directly impact our quality of life.
— Jyotika Bahree
Bahree is a member of West Windsor Council
