In this frightening era of house foreclosures, we appreciate our homes a lot these days. Granted half the foreclosures are strategic, meaning that the property value is less than what the owner owes. But who of us wants to be reduced to living in a car, or in one of those paupers’ camps featured in the paper?
What would it take for New Jersey or the United States to have what many other industrialized countries have had for generations—no, not universal health insurance or handgun prohibition or a ban on executions or a national discretionary budget that does not annually award two thirds-plus to arms? What do we need for everyone to have affordable housing? The answer is simple. But it depends on whether we are willing to share a reasonable amount of our hard-earned income for the common good simply by changing zoning laws to allow builders to put up lower-cost housing if population density is high enough, or whether we prefer to hoard it. Be ready to be called a Marxist even by Catholics if sharing seems best to you, even if it has been Catholic social doctrine since before Marx was born.
Imagine if we legislated for housing the way New Jersey does for car insurance. It requires it of all vehicle owners. It does not permit good drivers to escape it. I do not suggest that it is cheap. But with everyone taking part, the burden is spread wide so that it is affordable across the board. If government required all cities and towns to make available developable land for a fair percentage of low-income housing, no one place would regress into what so many fear when they hear the phrase “affordable housing:” a slum. No one wants the value of a property to decline because of how negligent neighbors live.
All of New Jersey’s 566 municipalities are required to zone a small amount of land for this, with a ceiling set so that too high a concentration of decent, cheaper homes does not become a ghetto. Low-income residents are positively influenced by more advantaged neighbors who take care of their property. Their children are in public and private schools with a majority of children from better off families. This process usually induces all children to more acceptance of racial and ethnic diversity.
RCAs, or regional contribution agreements, would be kept illegal. They are the side-steps used since the nationally famous Mount Laurel decision of the high court said we had to provide for all income people. Poorer cities and towns used to take payoffs from wealthier places to build the required low-income housing all were supposed to have. This made for guaranteed larger slums, the kind we see in Camden, Trenton, Newark and some other cities and towns.
On June 3, 2010, the N.J. bishops told state legislators, “With concern for the dignity of every human person, we recognize the fundamental importance of fair housing policies as a matter of justice. Thus we have supported efforts to combat discrimination in housing against racial and ethnic minorities, people with special needs, and families with children. We believe that the exclusion of the poor and lower-income households through a local government’s zoning policies is no less pernicious than the more blatant discrimination that offends our consciences and that our laws prohibit.”
State government now stands ready to shut down the Council on Affordable Housing and has little to replace it. This can be read as a refusal to act for the common good, even as government acting to injure the poor. Currently state law specifies the number of affordable housing units to individual municipalities. The Assembly has passed a proposal to require these to provide either 8 or 10 percent of their housing stock as affordable inventory over the next several decades.
It reminds me of the auto-repair ad: pay me now or pay me later. We may think we can delay that oil and filter change indefinitely, only to have the engine seize up. We may think we can continue to cram people of color and other diverse people into ghettos far from here to maintain the whiteness of suburban neighborhoods. But it will come back to bite us. Blighted and blasted cities will have to be rescued by Trenton the way Camden has been, at taxpayer expense.
In sum, we can provide the right to housing that every citizen has by joining to have all towns and cities make available small amounts of land for affordable housing. Or we can pay much more for more prisons, desperation-driven drug and alcohol addiction, food banks—and more city rescues.
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