by Emily Rubinson, Development & Grants Manager
Home is where health begins. One of the best tools we have to address public health — including physical and mental well-being, nutrition, physical safety, and access to high-quality education — is inclusionary zoning.
New Jersey’s Mount Laurel Doctrine is the nation’s strongest inclusionary zoning framework — and Fair Share Housing Center’s work bringing it to reality has created safe, healthy and affordable homes for hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans. Inclusionary zoning helps create vibrant, enriched, inclusive communities by ensuring people of all socioeconomic backgrounds can live, work, and learn together through the addition of affordable housing among market-rate housing. Inclusionary zoning can look like a percentage of units set aside as deed-restricted affordable housing in multi-family developments; scattered, deed-restricted affordable homes within neighborhoods; or 100% affordable housing developments in low-poverty neighborhoods.
Families who live in homes that are affordable, free from environmental toxins, and located in communities of opportunity have better health outcomes. Affordable housing is also linked to better educational outcomes for children and reductions in socioeconomic segregation (which also tends to reduce racial segregation) has been shown to decrease violent crime.
As you might expect, families with affordable housing have more money for healthcare, food, education, and saving. But the impact goes deeper than that — HUD’s Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing report, which followed families for 10-15 years, found that people who lived in affordable housing in lower poverty communities experienced lower rates of diabetes and psychological stress.
Another study from Montgomery County (MD) found that inclusive, affordable housing — which helps integrate schools — had a stronger, positive effect on learning outcomes than direct, school-based resources. Montgomery County has had an inclusionary zoning policy since 1973 that requires between 12.5%-15% of units in new developments of at least 20 homes be affordable to those making between 65%-70% of the area median income.
Exclusionary zoning and segregation has left many communities starkly divided by race and class. Racial segregation is linked to worse health outcomes, especially those caused by exposure to pollution and environmental toxins. Inclusionary zoning not only creates more affordable housing, but helps desegregate neighborhoods and provide new housing options in more climate-resilient and environmentally sound areas.
Jersey City adopted an inclusionary zoning ordinance that requires certain new developments to set aside 10-15% of units as deed-restricted housing affordable to those making up to 80% of the area median income. Since 2019, the city has added 1,625 deed-restricted homes, including in neighborhoods with the highest concentration of wealth near the waterfront. Critically, the wealthier neighborhoods of Jersey City, namely those on the waterfront, have lower rates of asthma. The opportunity to live in a different neighborhood, even within one’s own city, can have major health benefits.
In Mount Laurel, NJ, where hundreds of new affordable homes have been built as a result of Fair Share Housing Center’s work, the demographics have shifted: in 2000, 87% of residents were white and just 6.9% were Black or African American, but by 2020, 68% of residents were white and the Black or African American population had grown to 11.2%. Indeed, in Ethel R. Lawrence Homes, a 100% affordable development nestled in Mount Laurel since 2000, residents reported improvements in mental health and increased earnings, allowing them to prioritize other basic needs, like food and healthcare.
While there’s abundant evidence that inclusionary communities lead to better health, educational, and economic outcomes, one of their greatest benefits is difficult to fully measure: the feeling of peace experienced when people are finally able to find sanctuary in their homes.
