Bill > S602

Introduced Session

This bill would establish additional specific factors to be used in calculating the municipal adjustment for a municipality's fair share affordable housing obligation. The bill also caps the number of units a municipality may have allocated as its affordable housing obligation with regard to the size of the municipal population. The additional factors to be used in calculating the municipal adjustment are as follows: (a) population of the municipality; (b) water supply and sewerage capacity in the municipality; (c) school class sizes and school services in the municipality; (d) public safety services in the municipality; and (e) public transportation and traffic in the municipality. The bill requires a municipal adjustment if maintaining approximately the same school class sizes would be a significant cost or if adequate school, public safety, and public transportation resources are not available or would be a significant cost to provide. A municipal adjustment would also have to be made if present traffic conditions would be substantially disrupted. The additional municipal adjustment factors required by the bill would require a more holistic examination of the actual state of affairs in a municipality, as well as of the potential impacts of additional development, in calculating its fair share affordable housing obligation. This will help ensure that reasonable numbers are arrived at that will not be disruptive to the quality of life and provision of local government services in a municipality. The bill's population cap would protect those municipalities that may face dramatic municipal population increases if mandated to add a large amount of additional affordable housing. Current law provides that no municipality shall be required to address a fair share of affordable housing units beyond 1,000 low and moderate income units within 10 years from the grant of substantive certification; except that a municipality may be allocated more than 1,000 units, if based upon an evidentiary hearing, it is found likely that the municipality through its zoning powers could create a realistic opportunity for more than 1,000 low and moderate income units within that 10-year period. In order to prevent the disparate impact such a potentially large affordable housing mandate can create for municipalities with small populations, this bill provides that an allocation of units to a municipality as its fair share shall not exceed an amount that would result in an increase of the municipal population by more than five percent.

AI Summary

Committee Categories

Holly Schepisi (R)*,  Bob Singer (R)*, 

Introduced in the Senate, Referred to Senate Community and Urban Affairs Committee (on 01/11/2022)

Official Document