Opinion ID: 2365726
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 23

Heading: Order Specific Changes in the Zoning Ordinance

Text: Following the invalidation of a zoning regulation, a trial court ordinarily allows a municipality to correct deficiencies by amending its zoning ordinance within a specified period of time. In this way, the court permits the town to retain control over this stage of the rezoning process. However, where the revised ordinance continues an exclusionary character or otherwise fails to comport with the principles of Mt. Laurel, the trial court should begin to specify ways in which the ordinance must be modified. In the instant case, the majority has directed the trial court to undertake this task by ordering the town to adopt a revised ordinance which shall as minima : (a) allocate substantial areas for single-family dwellings on very small lots; (b) substantially enlarge the areas for dwellings on moderate sized lots; (c) substantially enlarge the AF district or create other enlarged multi-family zones; (d) reduce the RP, R-80 and R-40 zones to the extent necessary to effect the foregoing ...; (e) modify the restrictions in the AF zones and PUD areas ... which discourage the construction of apartments of more than two bedrooms; (f) modify the PUD regulations to eliminate the undue cost-generating requirements specified above; and (g) generally eliminate and reduce undue cost-generating restrictions in zones allocated to the achievement of lower income housing ... [ Ante at 553] I am in substantial accord with these detailed instructions and believe them to be fully justified under the facts of this case. I would only add that the Court might also have directed the municipality to overzone for low and moderate cost housing [ see ante at 518-520] and to either create a mobile home park zone or allow mobile homes as a permissible use in other residential districts. In this regard, I note, at the risk of stating the obvious, that mobile homes provide one of the most feasible and most readily available means of furnishing housing which is affordable to the elderly, to low and moderate income families and to young couples with one or two children. This additional source of housing is particularly important when, as now, economic conditions largely preclude construction of other forms of low cost housing. See generally D. Mandelker & R. Montgomery, Housing in America: Problems and Perspectives 223, 438 (1973); Rubinowitz, supra note 8, 6 Mich. J.L. Reform at 627 n. 3 & 630 n. 14; Bristow v. City of Woodhaven, supra, 192 N.W. 2d at 327-328; Sheperd's, Mobile Homes and Mobile Home Parks 3-8 & passim (1975).