New Jersey homeowners are sinking in monthly bills. In this brief, we explore the sky-high and rapidly rising costs of being a homeowner in New Jersey. This includes both mortgage and non-mortgage housing costs. New Jersey has the property taxes, and among the most expensive housing prices in the country. In addition, New Jersey homeowners pay 20 percent more in utility costs than the national average, and are now facing soaring electricity bills related to supply challenges and the new demands of AI data centers. New Jersey’s homeowners’ insurance premiums are also going up much faster than other states, related to private companies’ responses to more extreme weather and construction and labor costs. As these various costs add up, more homeowners – especially those with lower incomes – are sinking into debt and many are deferring home repairs and maintenance.
Read MoreIn New Jersey, new construction is exempt from price controls for 30 years, even in municipalities with rent control ordinances. Given the other exemptions available to developers, it is questionable whether this exemption is necessary to spur new construction. This memo examines that question by laying out the history of rent control in New Jersey as well as the history of the new construction exemption, looking at case law involving the exemption as well as arguments for the exemption and critique of those arguments, and proposes alternatives to the exemption as either an abolishment or revision of the exemption. The history shows how the moderate nature of rent control in New Jersey suggests that its effect on new construction is overblown, the legislative intent was more about removing barriers to new construction without considering any balance with the prevention of rent gouging, rent control is relevant towards new construction, and significant revision, if not abolishment, of the exemption would have a beneficial effect for existing affordable housing.
Read MoreAs the New Jersey Supreme Court recently noted in Malanga v. Township of West Orange, municipalities can sell or improve upon public property in a number of ways.¹ However, a redevelopment designation appears to be the best way for a municipality to maintain the greatest degree of control over the future of a given parcel, in terms of retaining ownership, choosing a developer and deciding the use to which the parcel will be put. Without such a designation, in order to facilitate non-publicly funded development of city-owned property, a city would have to auction property off to the highest bidder at an open public auction, a risky process over which the city could easily lose control.² Furthermore, though a municipality can impose conditions on the sale and restrictions on the use of property sold at auction,³ it cannot convey property for nominal consideration without a redevelopment designation, unless the property is conveyed to a very narrow set of noncommercial entities.⁴
Read MoreThis analysis investigates the available legal remedies for residents of Newark’s Ironbound and similarly positioned communities that could be used to halt or possibly reverse the concentrating of pollution sources in their neighborhoods. After reviewing the myriad health harms concentrated in minority urban neighborhoods and the history of Environmental Justice (EJ) litigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, this best-in-class student paper argues for alternative advocacy strategies. Through a combination of policy changes and the use of hybridized legal schemes typically unassociated with environmental law, the Ironbound may yet find relief from the asthma epidemic which has so far been unaddressed. These strategies include i) Empowering the EPA’s Office of Civil Rights, ii) Seeking State & Local Protection, iii) Claims under The Takings Clause and iv) Blending Environmental Justice and Disability Law.
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