Today, Mercer County Superior Court Judge Robert T. Lougy dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit attempting to overturn New Jersey’s landmark new affordable housing law.
This decision follows Judge Lougy’s earlier rejection of two separate motions to stay requests on different grounds, the rejection of two different emergent applications in New Jersey Appellate Court, and the rejection of an appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
The lawsuit was brought by three dozen municipalities, including many of the wealthiest and most historically exclusionary municipalities in the state. Using taxpayer dollars, they filed a case last September in an attempt to undermine New Jersey’s affordable housing policy framework, which requires each municipality to allow for its fair share of affordable housing. In today’s decision, Judge Lougy emphatically rejected all of the substantive arguments brought by the municipalities.
“It’s outrageous that a handful of wealthy towns are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money trying to block the affordable homes New Jerseyans desperately need,” said Josh Bauers, Director of Exclusionary Zoning Litigation for Fair Share Housing Center, who argued the motion to dismiss. “Thankfully, Judge Lougy saw through their baseless claims — and the overwhelming majority of municipalities are already moving forward to create the homes our families, seniors, and people with disabilities urgently need.”
Thanks to New Jersey’s new affordable housing law, many more towns are creating affordable housing and complying with the Mount Laurel Doctrine than any time in its 50-year history. A record 423 towns adopted and filed Housing Element and Fair Share Plans (HEFSPs) earlier this summer — and many of New Jersey’s largest suburbs have filed plans that are likely to receive final approval in the near future.
In New Jersey, the constitutional obligation for each municipality to allow its fair share of affordable homes, known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine, is recalculated every 10 years in cycles known as Rounds. Each municipality’s obligations are calculated by looking at factors in various regions of the state — such as job growth, existing affordability, and the growth of low- and moderate-income households — which determines an individualized requirement for affordable housing.
Ahead of the Fourth Round of Obligations starting in 2025, Governor Murphy signed landmark legislation (S50/A4) in 2024 that streamlines the affordable housing development process and codifies the methodology used to determine each municipality’s obligations over the next decade. The legislation’s primary sponsors were Senate President Nicholas Scutari, Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, State Senator Troy Singleton, Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, and State Assemblymembers Yvonne Lopez, Benjie Wimberly, and Verlina Reynolds-Jackson.
New Jersey’s law gives towns a wide variety of tools to create affordable housing in the way they prefer. Municipalities can choose from a range of options — such as 100% affordable housing, mixed-income housing, supportive housing for seniors or people with disabilities, or repurposing abandoned malls or offices. Towns only lose their ability to be in control
of the process when they refuse to allow any affordable housing and instead obfuscate the entire process.
The new affordable housing law and associated bills give towns additional tools like new bonuses, financing options, and credits to meet their affordable housing responsibilities. The new law also requires more transparent information to be shared with the public at each stage of the process, from adoption of initial plans to what is built and what public funds are available to create and rehabilitate affordable housing.
To view each municipality’s housing plan, visit the Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program and click through the counties on the left column. This site itself is an outcome of the new law — which for the first time requires all towns’ plans to be publicly available upon filing.
“This lawsuit is nothing more than a political smokescreen from the same wealthy towns that have fought affordable housing for decades,” added Bauers. “The vast majority of municipalities are embracing New Jersey’s new law and using it to build homes in ways that work best for their communities.”
