HOBOKEN – The Cherry Hill-based Fair Share Housing Center filed a complaint against the Hoboken Zoning Board and a developerthis week, alleging that the developer and board didn’t comply with Hoboken’s affordable housing ordinance for a new uptown Willow Street project that was approved in May.
The city has an ordinance, which some officials contend is not enforceable and should be changed, that requires 10 percent of new residential projects greater than 10 units to be low and moderate income units. The issue was written about at length in the Jan. 30 edition of The Hoboken Reporter. Click HERE to read the story.
The local law also requires developers to state the number of low and moderate income units in a project, as well as their sizes.
City officials have said that the law should be updated by the City Council, removing the requirement, as they say it no longer complies with state law. The state often changes affordable housing requirements, and Hoboken’s municipal code hasn’t been updated to go along with the changes.
A former Zoning Board member, Mike Evers, brought the issue to the council’s attention in January, telling them there was a law on the books that had not been enforced in some time.
When presented with the opportunity to remove the “outdated” law from the municipal code in February, the council did not vote to strip the requirement. Some sources say they did not vote to remove the requirement because an election season was underway and they didn’t want to be seen removing requirements for affordable housing.
The law still hasn’t been changed by the council.
However, Hoboken NAACP President Eugene Drayton called on the city to stand behind the ordinance in a release, and to require new affordable housing.
The complaint was filed in Hudson County Superior Court in Jersey City around July 6.
The plaintiff in the complaint is the Fair Share Housing Center of Cherry Hill, and the listed defendants are The Zoning Board of Hoboken, and a local developer.
The civil suit, filed in Hudson County Superior Court, doesn’t request a jury trial. For more on this story, keep watching HudsonReporter.com — Ray Smith