Mayor Mark Zinna: Affordable Housing

OPINION

There are a number of municipalities in New Jersey that are fighting the Fourth Round Affordable Housing rules in court. I have friends in many of these municipalities that are joining the fight, and would urge them to consider whether the financial and zoning challenges they believe they are confronted with are an actual burden, or perhaps they simply don’t want affordable housing.

Affordable housing is an economic imperative. New Jersey is an absurdly expensive place to live and an idea that creates opportunities for seniors, veterans, teachers, construction workers, etc to live in a quality environment that is affordable should be encouraged and supported. By the way, if additional homes means there are some extra kids in your school system, build another classroom. Educating children is a good thing, not a burden.

Affordable housing can actually reduce a communities tax burden per household. Think about the costs to maintain your streets; repaving, sewer and storm system maintenance, leaf collection, snow plowing, curbing, and sidewalks. Consider the tax dollars it takes to maintain one hundred feet of street. If you build one house on a property along that street length, the municipal maintenance expenses in front of that house costs the taxpayers four times the cost per house then it would if you had four townhouses on the same one hundred feet of property. The combined tax dollars of the four townhouses will certainly be more than the taxes of the one home. That means more potential tax dollars in the coffers and a lower amount of municipal expenses per household to maintain the street.

What is the fear of zoning burdens? Zoning is an arbitrary set of rules that were chosen by our ancestors during another time that fit their world. Life is evolving and we have Zoning and Planning Boards whose entire purpose is to grant relief from the rules of zoning. Of course we all want the character of well established neighborhoods to remain consistent. But that just means we have to revisit zoning rules and identify appropriate locations for affordable housing.

In Tenafly, we are engaged in actively supporting affordable housing. In our downtown district we have granted variances on properties to build four stories of apartments, rather than the zoned three stories. With each of these properties we have gained affordable housing units that we would not have otherwise if we stuck to the letter of our zoning rules.

Tenafly has gone a step further and used our Affordable Housing Trust Fund dollars, to purchase land for the specific purpose of building 100% affordable housing and donating the land to a non-profit to finance and build the housing. The first project was for ten garden style apartments now occupied by residents with special needs. For our second project we purchased three old houses, combined the lots, and we are in the process of donating the land to a non-profit who will be building sixteen affordable apartments specifically for veterans and their families.

We are in the beginning stages of acquiring the land for what we hope to be a third location of 100% affordable housing. By using this formula we are working to meet affordable housing goals without the need to build the market rate units to support the effort.

It’s very expensive to live in New Jersey, and we all have the same concerns around property taxes and the cost of homes. If we want to actually address these high costs, we have to step away from this ‘fear of affordable housing’ mind set and work together to build communities that are financially sustainable.

Mark Zinna is the mayor of Tenafly.  He sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 2017.