Opinion ID: 1901249
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Urban League of Essex County v. Township of Mahwah

Text: Exclusionary zoning litigation involving Mahwah Township has, in one form or another, been going on for more than a decade. [69] In the present action, plaintiffs, Urban League of Essex County, the North Jersey Community Union, and three individuals who seek housing in Mahwah (representing themselves and all others similarly situated), brought suit in February, 1972 against the northern Bergen County municipalities of Mahwah, Ramsey, Saddle River, and Upper Saddle River, alleging that these municipalities had failed to provide their fair share of low and moderate income housing as required by Mount Laurel. In December 1977, the Assignment Judge for Bergen County ordered a severance of the defendant municipalities. Plaintiffs decided to proceed initially against Mahwah only, and a trial was held in January and February of 1979. On March 8, 1979, seven years after the plaintiffs had originally filed their complaint, the trial court, in an unreported decision, dismissed plaintiffs' claims. While finding that Mahwah Township was a developing municipality and therefore had an obligation to provide opportunities for lower income housing under Mount Laurel and Madison, the court concluded that this obligation was being met by the Township's bona fide efforts to provide least cost housing through its new multi-family and mobile home zones. The court rejected plaintiffs' contention that the housing that could be built in Mahwah's new zones was not least cost (it was being priced at $70,000 and above). It was the court's finding that it was simply impossible to build housing at lower costs in northern Bergen County. Finally, the court refused to order Mahwah to take affirmative action to assure the construction of lower income housing, reasoning that such affirmative action was not required by this Court's decisions in Mount Laurel and Madison. On direct certification before this Court, plaintiffs' basic contention is that Mahwah's provision for very expensive multi-family dwellings should not be considered sufficient to meet the Township's Mount Laurel obligation. Instead, they maintain that the trial court should have ordered Mahwah to take the necessary affirmative steps to insure that the housing built would actually be affordable to low and moderate income families. Finally, plaintiffs argue that the trial court erred by basing its finding that lower cost housing could not be built in Mahwah largely upon the judge's own personal experience. Although the municipality urges affirmance of the trial court's decision, it disagrees with it in two respects. First, Mahwah had urged the trial court, and urges this Court now, to deny standing to the organizational plaintiffs in this case (the Urban League of Essex County and the North Jersey Community Union). Mahwah relies upon the United States Supreme Court's holding in Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 45 L.Ed. 2d 343 (1975), that such organizations do not have standing in federal court to challenge allegedly exclusionary zoning ordinances. The defendant did not challenge the standing of the individual plaintiffs before the trial court because their standing had been approved in Urban League of Essex Cty. v. Township of Mahwah, 147 N.J. Super. 28 (App.Div.), certif. den., 74 N.J. 278 (1977). However, defendant now argues that this approval may no longer be justified because it was based primarily on the fact that the plaintiffs worked at the Ford plant in Mahwah, which is now closed. The defendant also disagrees with the trial court's characterization of Mahwah as a developing municipality within the ambit of the Mount Laurel doctrine. The Township claims that it is composed of two discrete areas, one of which is rural and the other of which is fully developed, both, therefore, outside the scope of Mount Laurel. In urging this Court to affirm the trial court's holding that it has met any Mount Laurel obligation it may have, the defendant emphasizes its agreement with the trial court's refusal to order affirmative remedies. Mahwah maintains that such remedies would be either ineffective in actually producing lower income housing ( e.g., density bonuses) or of questionable legality ( e.g., mandatory set-asides). Mahwah further contends that the finding that lower cost housing cannot be built in northern Bergen County rests squarely on the evidence. Mahwah is a 25.7 square mile (16,450 acre) municipality at the northwest corner of Bergen County. Because large areas are wilderness or devoted to public uses ( e.g., Ramapo College), only 6,800 of these acres are developed or developable. Of these, between 1,400 and 1,700 are still vacant. Mahwah is about 35 miles from Newark and New York City. Its population has been growing rapidly from 7,376 in 1960 to 10,800 in 1970 to 12,130 in 1980. The population density of 471.9 people per square mile is significantly lower than Bergen County's 3,604 and the state's 983.3. Mahwah's infrastructure, though not as extensive as that of communities closer to major urban areas, is relatively well developed. The Township has its own public water system and is in the first stages of providing public sewers for its developed areas. Mass transit is readily available between Mahwah and the urban centers to its southeast. The Township is traversed by at least two major highways, Routes 17 and 507, and has 2.77 linear miles of roads per square mile compared with 7.96 linear miles per square mile in Bergen County and a statewide mean of 10.24. The challenged zoning ordinance, adopted in 1976, divides the Township into 11 districts. Six of these districts permit single-family housing only: R-80 (80,000 square foot lots); R-40 (40,000 square foot lots); R-20 (20,000 square foot lots); R-10 (10,000 square foot lots); R-5 (5,000 square foot lots); and C-80 (a Conservation Zone District that was largely undevelopable but that set aside certain low density zones that permit no more than one unit per 80,000 square foot lot). Five districts permit multi-family housing. GA-200 permits garden apartments to be built on 20,000 square foot minimum lots. The number of units per lot depends on the number of bedrooms per unit: the more bedrooms, the fewer units. The ordinance also requires two off-street parking spaces per unit, half of which must be inside a garage. R-11 permits two-family dwellings to be built on 11,000 square foot lots. PRD-4 and PRD-6 allow for planned residential developments with overall densities, respectively, of four and six units, per acre. The planned residential development must be a specified mixture of single-family dwellings, garden apartments, and townhouses. Developers are required to amass a 50 acre lot as a prerequisite to developing any land within this zone, although the Planning Board has discretion to allow 25 acre plots to be added to existing developments. An underlying use of the PRD zones is R-20, without the requirement that the developer amass 50 acres. RM-6 permits mobile homes or, in the alternative, single-family houses on 40,000 square foot plots. Mobile home parks are permitted with 400,000 square foot minimum lot sizes for each park. In addition to the above districts, there is a CED zone. This zone, which is covered by a separate ordinance, provides for timed commercial development and for the construction of 565 housing units. Mahwah's zoning provisions, when coupled with the present economic situation, have resulted in extremely high housing costs in the Township. The trial court termed the housing costs throughout Bergen County as astronomical. Plaintiffs' evidence established that 58.3 percent of Bergen County families and 70 percent of New Jersey families as a whole cannot afford to pay more than $50,000 for housing, but only 15 percent of the housing in Mahwah would sell below that price. Also, 38.8 percent of Bergen's population and 53 percent of New Jersey's population cannot afford to pay more than $40,000 for housing, but only 5.6 percent of Mahwah's residential units would sell below that price.
Before proceeding to a discussion of Mahwah's fair share obligations, we address the Township's claim that plaintiffs lack standing in this case due to the closing of Ford's Mahwah plant. As mentioned previously, the Appellate Division upheld the standing of the individual non-resident employees at an earlier stage of litigation, and found it unnecessary to rule on the Urban League's standing. The Township claims that the closing of the Ford plant undercuts the individual plaintiffs' right to sue, and therefore makes dismissal appropriate, since they suggest that the Urban League lacks standing to continue the suit on its own. We disagree, and intend to clarify the standing doctrine as it applies to exclusionary zoning cases. As this Court pointed out in Crescent Park Tenants Ass'n v. Realty Equities Corp. of N.Y., 58 N.J. 98 (1971), New Jersey cases have historically taken a much more liberal approach on the issue of standing than have the federal cases. Id. at 101. New Jersey courts, we noted, have never allowed procedural frustration to prevent determinations on the merits where the plaintiff can demonstrate a legitimate interest in the lawsuit. Id. at 107-08. See also State v. Alston, 88 N.J. 211, 225-230 (1981); N.J. Chamb. Commerce v. N.J. Elec. Law Enforce. Comm., 82 N.J. 57, 67-69 (1980); Home Builders League of So. Jersey, Inc. v. Twp. of Berlin, 81 N.J. 127, 131-32 (1979). We believe that the need for a liberal approach to standing is especially important in Mount Laurel litigation. The people who have the greatest interest in ending exclusionary zoning, non-resident poor people and organizations such as the Urban League, which represent the interests of such people, very often have little or no direct relationship with particular exclusionary municipalities. In fact, the whole problem is that exclusionary zoning prevents such relationships from developing. Thus, we hold that any individual demonstrating an interest in, or any organization that has the objective of, securing lower income housing opportunities in a municipality will have standing to sue such municipality on Mount Laurel grounds. In Mahwah itself, we agree with the Appellate Division's holding in Urban League of Essex Cty. v. Township of Mahwah, 147 N.J. Super. 28, certif. den., 74 N.J. 278 (1977), that the individual plaintiffs had standing to sue. We find it irrelevant that the Mahwah Ford plant at which these plaintiffs worked is now closed, since the plaintiffs still express an interest in securing lower income housing opportunities in Mahwah. Further, we hold that the Urban League plainly has standing to sue in this case since, in effect, it represents those nonresident poor most in need of expanded lower income housing opportunities in suburbs such as Mahwah.
We turn to the trial court's disposition of Mahwah's Mount Laurel obligation. The trial court, after deciding that Mahwah was developing, held that the Township satisfied the resulting Mount Laurel obligation by providing least cost housing. It rejected plaintiffs' claim that housing costs could be reduced in Mahwah so that housing could be constructed at prices affordable by lower income families, stating instead that the judge's personal knowledge of the economic situation led him to conclude that the housing available reflected a bona-fide attempt at achieving least cost. [70] We disagree with both the trial court's approach and ultimate conclusion, and therefore reverse and remand. On remand the trial court will immediately appoint an expert to assist the court in the fair share hearing, which shall be conducted in accordance with this opinion. Assuming the Township does not challenge the SDGP characterization of Mahwah as containing a growth area, and assuming the court finds that Mahwah's present ordinance does not provide a realistic opportunity for the construction of its present and prospective fair share of the regional lower income housing need (and this seems certain from the record before us), it will enter a judgment invalidating the ordinance along with an order requiring Mahwah to revise its ordinance to achieve compliance. To the extent necessary, that revision should eliminate the cost-generating provisions that have made least cost housing impossible to construct. That order should require Mahwah fully to utilize the remedial devices set forth above, and should include appointment of a master to aid in the amendment of Mahwah's ordinance. Mahwah, which contains a growth area under the SDGP, [71] will have to document its efforts at providing lower income housing opportunities (efforts that must include use of affirmative devices where necessary), and then if, and only if, provision of such opportunities is shown to be impossible, it will be required to prove that the opportunities it does provide are in fact least cost. We therefore reverse the trial court's judgment and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.