BRANCHBURG – The municipality could be required to provide 500 to 600 additional affordable housing units when the next round of quotas is released later this year.
“This is not good news,” said township committee member Tom Young at Monday’s board meeting.
In the previous round of affordable housing quotas, Supreme Court orders required Branchburg to provide 1,000 more affordable housing units. This has led to a boom in multifamily housing development in the community.
An additional 500 to 600 affordable housing units would have a significant impact on the community, Young said.
“This is the single biggest issue that will impact your quality of life and property taxes in the city,” he said.
For the past quarter century, the community’s population has been about 15,000 in about 5,500 housing units, but the latest round of quotas could increase the number of housing units to 9,000, Young said.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it,” he said, “but it’s not going to keep the city the way it is.”
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Township Administrator Greg Bonin said Branchburg must have a plan to meet the new quota by next spring, with a housing ordinance due a year later.
“We will do what we can to address this,” Young said.
When the last round of quotas was announced, Branchburg faced 14 lawsuits—more than any other municipality in New Jersey. The lawsuits were filed by developers offering a “developer remedy program,” which requires the municipality to rezone the developer’s property to allow high-density development, provided that a significant portion of the housing units are set aside as affordable housing.
“We hesitated as long as we could,” Young said, adding that the community lost the lawsuits because “the courts were biased against us.”
Young urged residents to contact Trenton elected officials on the issue.
Bonin said more information on the history of affordable housing in Branchburg can be found on the municipality’s website under the “Document Center” tab.
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