Opinion ID: 2365726
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Least Cost versus Low and Moderate Income Housing

Text: A key consideration in this particular case as well as a factor integral to the entire problem, generally, is the well-known fact, amply corroborated by this record, that private enterprise will not in the current and prospective economy without subsidization or external incentive of some kind construct new housing affordable by the low income population and by a large proportion of those of moderate income. [19] We recognized this fact in Mount Laurel. 67 N.J. at 170, n. 8; 188, n. 21. The amount and kind of governmental subsidies available for housing has always been fragmentary, and federal sources have recently been restricted. [20] What can legally be required of municipalities by way of initiation of public housing programs and provision of zoning incentives for production of lower income housing will be discussed infra. But it will be apparent that sources extraneous to the unaided private building industry cannot be depended upon to produce any substantial proportion of the housing needed and affordable by most of the lower income population. In view of the foregoing, defendant implies that the mandate of Mount Laurel is impracticable in the current economy and that litigation to enforce it is futile. Thus defendant flatly asserts in a supplemental brief: We do not believe that substantial low and moderate income housing can be created by zoning. However, it goes on to make an observation which appears to us to provide the clue to the only acceptable alternative recourse if in fact private enterprise cannot economically construct the housing needed for lower income families. It states: Planned Unit Development can help by providing large amounts of additional housing some of which is in the moderate income range. The effect of new construction is also to create filtering whereby families in the moderate income group move into new housing created in the PUD zone making available existing housing for lower income families who cannot afford the new. Without subsidization, this is undoubtedly the most reasonable and certain method of creating housing opportunities for low income families. To the extent that the builders of housing in a developing municipality like Madison cannot through publicly assisted means or appropriately legislated incentives (as to which, see infra ) provide the municipality's fair share of the regional need for lower income housing, it is incumbent on the governing body to adjust its zoning regulations so as to render possible and feasible the least cost housing, consistent with minimum standards of health and safety, which private industry will undertake, and in amounts sufficient to satisfy the deficit in the hypothesized fair share. As the matter was put in a supplemental amicus brief of The Public Advocate:    for now, and in the foreseeable future, it is absolutely essential to build a substantial amount of housing units at the lowest cost feasible and consistent with health and safety. Builders now must be given the opportunity to build as inexpensively as possible in order to accommodate the low, moderate-subsidized and, especially, moderate-conventional population. Thus, in one sense, future disparities in the increases in housing cost and median income are not relevant; that is, we should be building at the lowest cost feasible now. This sentiment has also been expressed by a leading commentator who responded thus to the argument that the inability of lower income persons to afford unsubsidized housing rendered minimal the impact of exclusionary ordinances: As a factual matter, the situation may often be otherwise; particularly where the ordinance is enacted by an undeveloped suburb attempting to stem an urban tide, the availability of low cost housing a decade hence may be very much a function of zoning requirements today. Sager, Tight Little Islands: Exclusionary Zoning, Equal Protection and the Indigent, 21 Stanford L.J. 767, 792 (1969). Nothing less than zoning for least cost housing [21] will, in the indicated circumstances, satisfy the mandate of Mount Laurel. While compliance with that direction may not provide newly constructed housing for all in the lower income categories mentioned, it will nevertheless through the filtering down process referred to by defendant tend to augment the total supply of available housing in such manner as will indirectly provide additional and better housing for the insufficiently and inadequately housed of the region's lower income population. See also Mount Laurel, 67 N.J. at 205 (Pashman, J., concurring). [22] It will be apparent from our survey of the facts and the discussion hereinafter that the 1973 ordinance under review not only fails to provide directly for Madison's fair share of the region's low and moderate income housing needs but also is not geared to satisfy such a share in terms of least cost housing in the sense just described. The failure will be seen to be both quantitative and qualitative. Insufficient areas are zoned to permit such housing, and the zoning restrictions are such as to prevent production of units at least cost consistent with health and safety requirements.