After 15 years, Wall affordable housing plan OK'd by judge – just in time to start again

WALL TOWNSHIP ― Joshua Langenberger is the first to admit that he's a lucky guy.

He's happily married, the father of a blended family with three kids between two and eight years old who keep him and his wife pretty busy. He's spent 30 years doing a job he loves, teaching science to kids in Howell, most recently at the middle school.

And now, he's got a golden ticket.

After nearly a year of waiting, Langenberger is finally near the top of the list to purchase a new townhouse in the Quail Ridge development in Wall – specifically, one of the affordable housing units designated for moderate-income families. The three-bedroom townhouse is priced at $213,592, per affordable housing regulations, and Langenberger, 52, has already been approved for a conventional 30-year mortgage after years and years of saving.

"Being at the top of this list is like striking gold for my family," Langenberger said. "It's equivalent to winning the lottery."

It shouldn't be that hard. And, with the town's nearly 16-year-long court battle over its affordable housing obligations finally done and dusted – the hope is that "winning the lottery" will become far easier by more than doubling the number of affordable housing units in Wall.

On March 4, Wall Township and the Fair Share Housing Center received final judgment on the town's Fair Share Housing Plan that dictates where 937 new affordable housing units for individuals and families with very low, low and moderate incomes will be located.

NJ affordable housing plan approved

It's a momentous occasion for the town that's been a long time coming: The back-and-forth litigation and negotiations have been going on since 2008, when a new state law eliminated "regional contribution agreements," which allowed municipalities to transfer their obligations to other municipalities.

Wall was left on the hook for 1,250 units which included, in part, the township's obligation to make up for the 542 affordable homes it had farmed off to other municipalities.

The town and the Fair Share Housing Center, a nonprofit representing the state's interests in affordable housing cases, agreed to a settlement of 937 units in 2019. Some of those projects are already built, under construction or nearing completion.

For the last five years, that plan has gone through a series of amendments as developers dropped out of the project and township officials had to figure out how to make ends meet.

More: Is the 15-year affordable housing fight in Wall nearing its end?

"It's a huge town with a lot of different sites, and they were trying to meet this huge need all at once," said Joshua Bauers, senior staff attorney for the Fair Share Housing Center.

Much of the back-and-forth comes from township officials trying to figure out how to meet that need without simultaneously green-lighting widescale housing development. Since most affordable housing units are built as part of larger, "inclusionary" developments, simply saying "yes" to affordable homes often means approving exponentially more market-rate homes, as well.

For example, only 20 of the 100 townhouses in the Quail Ridge development are designated as affordable. The remaining 80 are sold at market prices, which start above $700,000, according to builder K. Hovnanian.

Municipal officials are often under the gun to approve such projects, under threat of "builder's remedy" lawsuits, in which a developer can circumvent a town's master plan and zoning laws – choosing what and where to build, so long as 20% of the units are designated for affordable housing. As long as a town is deemed compliant with affordable housing obligations, it's immune from builder's remedy lawsuits.

The result of all this? Nearly 2,200 homes were approved in Wall as part of the affordable housing plan, including the 973 affordable units. If and when all are built, the number of homes in Wall will increase by nearly 21%, according to Census records.

To those looking for affordable housing, those new units are a long time coming.

Kathleen Wood has spent two years waiting for affordable housing units to open up. She's hoping to move her 84-year-old mother, Nancy, into one. And she's hoping to find a place to "launch" her son, Sean. Sean, 24, is on the autism spectrum, but works full-time in retail. There simply aren't any market-rate places for Nancy or Sean to live.

"I want to get my son launched properly, I want to get my mother settled while I still have the energy," Wood said. "There's no safety net. There's no secret trust fund or anything. I'm it."

Bill Ludwig got a call in 2022 informing him that, after two and a half years on the waiting list, he'd been approved for an affordable housing unit in an age-restricted community in Wall.

And he had to turn it down.

As the rent at his Wall apartment continued to rise, Ludwig couldn't wait any longer: He moved into a condo in an age-restricted community in Brick. But it wasn't an affordable housing unit, and he'd had to dip into his life savings to make it work.

"I told them, 'you should have called me a month ago,'" he said.

What new NJ affordable housing laws mean

Before too long, Wall officials will have to start figuring out where another few hundred affordable housing units will have to go.

The "fourth round" of affordable housing obligations is set to kick off with new obligation totals issued later this year, followed by a series of deadlines municipalities must meet before submitting a full housing plan by June 2025.

Wall's obligation will likely be far lower than 1,250 this time around, with the town's affordable housing attorney, Erik Nolan, estimating it be lowered by as much as 60%.

"They're still going to have a big number, but it's such a big town," Nolan said. "Towns like Wall end up getting the brunt of it, and have to build the most units."

This round will also be subject to new laws enacted by Gov. Phil Murphy this month, which created a new formula to determine how many units each town must build. The new laws also establish a new Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program, to which municipalities must submit their housing plans, instead of Superior Court, which current law requires.

The legislation also increases and creates new bonus credits, including age-restricted units, special needs housing, and units built near public transit.

Housing advocates have praised the legislation, with Fair Share Housing Center Executive Director Adam Gordon calling it "one of the strongest frameworks in the U.S. to require affordable homes in historically exclusionary communities."

But the bill faced opposition from municipal officials and the New Jersey League of Municipalities, who have said the legislation could still mean imposing big obligations on towns that are otherwise ill-equipped to sustain such growth.

Whether those disagreements wind up in more litigation in Wall remains to be seen. Nolan said he was concerned that the new laws make it easier for a town to lose its immunity to builder's remedy lawsuits, which would send the process back into the courts anyway.

Bauers was confident that the new legislation would go a long way toward remedying many of the issues that led to Wall's 16-year legal battle. But that doesn't mean there won't be legal hiccups.

"I can almost guarantee you there will be a few towns who are going to say their obligation is zero, when it's really 1,000," Bauers said. "But this bill isn't written for those towns. It's for the towns who are ready to comply, ready to do good planning and actually build housing for people that need it."

Mike Davis has spent the last decade covering New Jersey local news, marijuana legalization, transportation and basically whatever else is going on at any given moment. Contact him at mdavis@gannettnj.com or @byMikeDavis on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Wall affordable housing OK'd. What do new laws from Phil Murphy do?