Fifty years ago this week, news was being made in New Jersey that would get coverage in Shelterforce’s very first issue—a decision in the case of Southern Burlington County NAACP v. Township of Mount Laurel. That New Jersey Supreme Court ruling, together with a subsequent one, formed what is known as the Mount Laurel Doctrine, which requires that all New Jersey municipalities provide their “fair share” of the affordable housing needed in the state.
The Mount Laurel Doctrine is credited with the creation of 75,000 affordable homes in New Jersey, according to the Fair Share Housing Center. It has also led to the creation of 130,000 middle-class homes, said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in a speech this week commemorating the 50th anniversary.
There are fair share housing rules in a few other states as well—California has its Housing Element requirement, with recently stepped-up enforcement. Massachusetts has its very successful 40B requirement. And over the last several years, Connecticut has been organizing to get a fair share provision.
Fair share housing provisions are ways to create healthy mixed-income communities, reduce the effects of long commutes, decrease segregation, and recognize the interdependence of our regions and states. By allowing forms of housing like duplexes, row homes, and apartment complexes to be built in places that have resisted it, these provisions may also increase housing supply overall, which in places with shortages is one part of bringing housing costs down.
Mount Laurel has done a lot of what it set out to do, including successfully adding affordable housing to its namesake. But of course, it hasn’t been a simple panacea either. Shelterforce has covered some of the state’s many struggles to implement the ruling. The history of the Mount Laurel Doctrine reflects many of the major themes and challenges in the affordable housing movement nationwide. To name just a few:
- How policy and legal wins must be constantly defended and backed up by organizers and advocates if they are to produce real and lasting change.
- How “fair share” gets defined, especially during times when the agency assigned to define and implement it doesn’t have political support.
- How the value of local control should be balanced with enforcement of a regional or statewide obligation. (A major lever for enforcement of fair share provisions is that developers of affordable housing are not fully subject to local zoning and planning decisions if the municipality is out of compliance with its obligations.)
- How metropolitan areas are interconnected and why it’s better for everyone to recognize that.
- How fair share housing advocates can work with environmentalists concerned that affordable housing obligations will increase construction on sensitive lands, rather than be pitted against them.
- Do the fears of NIMBYs tend to come true or not?
- Should towns be allowed to make payments in lieu of building their own affordable housing (perhaps generating more units overall by allowing building in cheaper locations), or does that defeat the purpose of the original ruling?
- Which fair share solutions work better? Those based on legislation, like Massachusetts’s 40B, or via a court decision?
- Is opening up the suburbs enough, or does that also need to be paired with investment in places with plenty of affordable housing but also lots of disinvestment?
- How well, if at all, do race-neutral solutions fix problems created by racially targeted policies and practices?
The fact that it raises all these meaty questions is not a criticism of the Mount Laurel Doctrine or all the efforts New Jersey has made to implement it. Far from it. Rather it shows just how important it is and how relevant it is for the entire country. As Judge Morris Pashman wrote in his concurring opinion on the case in 1975:
“The people of New Jersey should welcome the result reached by the Court in this case, not merely because it is required by our laws, but, more fundamentally, because the result is right and true to the highest American ideals.”
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These questions highlight the brilliant & dogged work that Fair Share Housing Center has been doing in the courts, legislature & community for 50 years. The rest of us in other states owe FSHC a debt of gratitude for pioneering solutions to these complex issues.