Saying the city should do more to provide affordable housing for its residents, a local group came to block a building proposal at a city Planning Board meeting last week.
Their target: Newport developer Samuel J. LeFrak.
A small group of protesters entered the council chambers on Tuesday, made one pass around the seated area, and chanted, “Give us our money back, Sam LeFrak.” They came to a stop in the back of the chambers.
Audience members and planners watched silently.
“Developers like Lefrak are taking funding from Jersey City taxpayers,” said Jeffrey Dublin, a member of a non-profit group called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), prior to the meeting, “and building housing for New Yorkers, when longtime Jersey City residents can’t even find an apartment they can afford.”
The group had intended to ask the Planning Board, which was hearing an amendment to a plan for a Lefrak office building at the corner of Washington and Sixth Street, not to approve the plan.
But after speaking with Lefrak Organization attorney Brian Doherty and the city’s Housing and Economic Development director Annemarie Uebbing, representatives from ACORN agreed to meet Jan. 16 to discuss ways the city can provide more housing for residents.
“The citizens who kept this city above water before the developers came,” said Matthias Sharpless, an ACORN worker, “they deserve a chance to share in the wealth.”
The group suggested that developers either donate a percentage of new housing toward affordable units or provide money to aid in the creation of affordable housing.
The city had for a time used part of tax abatement money toward creating a housing trust fund. But during the 90s, that money went to a so-called “recreation fund” – money for individual council members. That practice stopped last summer, when the state forced the City Council to vote as a whole on the use of that money. Uebbing said that the council may consider donating some of the recreation funds to new affordable housing in the near future.
Ahead of the game?
Still, city officials contend Jersey City is ahead of state requirements for affordable housing.
Since 1987, state law required Jersey City to add 176 units of affordable housing. The city has added 1,432, according to statistics in the city’s master plan.
The total number of HUD-mortgaged, Section 8, public housing and affordable housing in the city totals 11,436, or 13.9 percent, according to that master plan.
But statistics also show that the city added only 36 units in 1999.
Uebbing said that a change of staff and a re-evaluating of procedures led to the drop in housing construction. The problem now for residents, she said, is good times.
“When the economy is good and rents are increasing, there is going to be a discrepancy,” she said. “We try to combat it.”
Officials point to the impending construction of Lafayette Gardens and the awarding of a tax abatement to Bostwick Court, a 69-unit affordable housing project, as evidence that the city is working to build more housing.
Yet. the Lefrak Organization agrees that more needs to be done.
“Our position is there is a need for affordable housing,” said Lefrak attorney Doherty. He said the Lefrak Organization would meet with the advocates to discuss options.