Opinion ID: 2002109
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Allocation of Projected Need and Reallocated Present Need.

Text: Each municipality's share of the region's prospective need for low- and moderate-income housing is based on four factors, the first two of which relate to municipal need for and responsibility to provide affordable housing, and the latter two relate to municipal capacity to provide such housing. Although all four factors, weighted equally, determine the allocation of prospective need, only the first three factors are applied in distributing reallocated present need. N.J.A.C. 5:92-5.3; 5.4. The allocation factors are the following: (a) Regressed annual covered employment change within a municipality from 1977-1984, as a percentage of regional regressed annual covered employment change for the same period. (Covered employment refers to employees covered by the New Jersey Unemployment Compensation Law, L. 1936, c. 270, as amended. For an explanation of the difference between an arithmetic and a regression measurement of employment growth, see AMG Realty Co., supra, 207 N.J. Super. at 441-42, 504 A. 2d 692.); (b) Covered employment in a municipality as a percentage of regional covered employment (1984); (c) Municipal land located in growth areas as a percentage of growth area in the region; (d) Municipal 1983/1984 aggregate per-capita income as a percentage of 1983/1984 regional aggregate per-capita income. N.J.A.C. 5:92  Appendix A at 92-46. We note that fifty percent of the weight accorded to the prospective-need-allocation factors derive from the municipality's proportionate share of the region's employment and the municipality's proportionate share of the region's employment growth. That emphasis on employment recognizes that an important objective of the Mount Laurel doctrine is to provide workers with housing in the vicinity of their place of employment. Mount Laurel II, supra, 92 N.J. at 256, 456 A. 2d 390; AMG Realty Co., supra, 207 N.J. Super. at 412-14, 504 A. 2d 692. Counter-balancing the weight accorded employment in the allocation formula, however, are the municipality's physical capacity to accommodate new housing units  as reflected by the growth-area factor  and its financial capacity to absorb infrastructure costs incidental to high-density development  measured by the comparison between the municipality's and the region's per-capita income. By according a municipality's physical and financial capacity to accommodate affordable housing a significance equal to that assigned to the demand for housing generated by local employment, COAH has developed an allocation formula that avoids concentrating affordable housing in less affluent industrial communities in favor of a formula that encourages the construction of affordable housing in communities with the financial capacity and adequate growth-area land to absorb high-density housing. See AMG Realty Co., supra, 207 N.J. Super. at 433-34, 504 A. 2d 692. When we compare the method of calculation with the method of allocation, we discern that COAH deems housing demand generated by municipal employment to be more relevant for purposes of allocating prospective regional need than it is for purposes of calculating the extent of that need, presumably on the basis that workers are likely to reside in the region and therefore have already been taken into account by the population projections used to forecast prospective need. That relevance is diluted, however, by COAH's decision to accord equal weight to a municipality's physical and fiscal capacity to accommodate affordable housing.