Opinion ID: 2365726
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Calculation of the Municipal Fair Share of Regional Housing Needs.

Text: As noted, the task of formulating a remedial order ordinarily begins with a quantification of the municipality's fair share of regional housing needs. In Mt. Laurel, we observed that the recent proliferation and widespread acceptance of fair share allocation plans has engendered numerous formulae and techniques for making this determination. Mt. Laurel, supra, 67 N.J. at 189-190; id. at 215-216 (Pashman, J., concurring). Obviously, no one approach or formulaic device is judicially mandated and courts should carefully weigh all reasonable proposals submitted to them by expert witnesses and local planning authorities. However, some quantifiable approximation of the municipality's fair share is necessary as an aid in formulating remedial plans or evaluating their adequacy. See id. at 190. For this reason, I am baffled by the majority's pronouncement that, while Madison Township is obligated to create the opportunity for a fair and reasonable share of the housing needs of its region, no formulaic determination or numerical specification of such a fair and reasonable share is required. Ante at 553. Because this approach gives the trial court no reliable way of measuring local compliance with the Court's remedial order, I fail to see how it will encourage implementation of an effective remedial plan. The need for at least some degree of specificity in this regard was aptly stated in a recent article on the subject of exclusionary zoning: ... The absence of explicit tests for determining whether an ordinance is unlawfully exclusionary exacerbates the problem. On remand, the Madison court discussed the concept of fair share allocation of low and moderate income housing within a given region. This concept requires an evaluation of both the income distribution of the municipality's population and that of the larger metropolitan area of which the township is a part. The precise manipulation of the statistics to be gathered and the formulation of land use provisions, however, was not addressed by the court and thus the township was left with no clear idea of how best to implement the fair share concept. To require a township to revise its ordinance to meet reasonable yet imprecise standards imputes a measure of good faith that may not exist. It is difficult to believe that a township that systematically has excluded all but the affluent would frame, much less administer, an ordinance that actively will encourage the entry of others. [Mallach, supra, 6 Rutgers-Camden L.J. at 664; footnotes omitted, emphasis supplied] While absolute precision or adoption of a foolproof formula is neither necessary nor possible, some reasonable approximation of the municipality's fair share obligation is essential for a proper evaluation of remedial efforts. Ordinarily a challenge that a local zoning ordinance is exclusionary requires an initial determination of the municipality's fair share of regional housing needs during the course of the trial. However, in some cases, such as in the instant case, the exclusionary impact of the challenged ordinance is so patent that there is no need to quantify the municipal obligation under Mt. Laurel prior to entering judgment in the case. Oakwood at Madison v. Madison Tp., supra, 128 N.J. Super. at 447. Thus, where no such determination has been made, the trial court will have to fix and specify the municipal obligation during the remedial stage of the case. As noted in Mt. Laurel, proximate quantification of the municipal obligation generally requires (1) identification of the relevant region; (2) a determination of the present and prospective housing needs of the region and (3) allocation of these needs among the various municipalities in the region. Mt. Laurel, supra, 67 N.J. at 215 (Pashman, J., concurring). While the trial court should solicit recommendations from the parties and particularly from the municipality's planning authority, delineation of the appropriate region is ultimately a question for the court. As we recognized in Mt. Laurel, the composition of the relevant region will necessarily vary from case to case and no hard and fast rule can provide the appropriate answer in every instance. [20] Mt. Laurel, supra, 67 N.J. at 189. Among the geographic units which experts have suggested are: the county, a multicounty unit, the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area utilized by the Federal Office of Management and Budget in calculating the United States Census, an urbanized or nonrural subregion of the relevant Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (such as that utilized in Gautreaux v. Chicago Housing Authority, supra, 304 F. Supp. at 737-738); an area coextensive with the jurisdiction of a regional planning authority, if one exists; the area within which most residents of the community journey to work; and the housing market area employed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and discussed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hills v. Gautreaux, supra, 425 U.S. at 298-301, 96 S.Ct. at 1546-47, 47 L.Ed. 2d at 804-05. In determining which of these alternate definitions of a region is appropriate in a particular case, the court should consider and weigh the following factors: (1) where low and moderate cost housing is currently being sought, (2) where development is likely to take place in the foreseeable future, (3) where the municipality's current and prospective residents work or are likely to work, (4) whether there exists a regional planning agency, (5) whether the location of transportation facilities and prospective employment makes commutation likely, and (6) whether the suggested region is sufficiently large and diverse to permit a feasible solution to the housing problem. See generally ante at 540; Mt. Laurel, supra, 67 N.J. at 215 n. 16 (Pashman, J., concurring); Rubinowitz, supra note 8, 6 Mich. L.J. Reform at 652-655; Rubinowitz, supra at 219-220; Rose, supra note 17, 6 Rutgers-Camden L.J. at 717-720; Davidoff & Davidoff, Opening the Suburbs: Toward Inclusionary Land Use Controls, 22 Syracuse L. Rev. 509 (1971); Bisgaier, supra note 2, 99 N.J.L.J. at 738, Cols. 2-3; Lindbloom, Defining `Fair Share' of `Regional Need': A Planner's Application of Mount Laurel, 98 N.J.L.J. 633 (1975). I would order the trial court to actually identify the region which includes the defendant municipality. The majority, on the other hand, concludes that, generally, no specific geographical area will be necessarily the authoritative region, and that in this case the trial court should look to the housing market area of which Madison Township is a part and from which the future population of the township would be drawn in the absence of exclusionary zoning. See ante at 537, 538, 543-544. Unless the trial court determines the appropriate region with some degree of specificity, it will be unable to arrive at any meaningful estimate of the region's housing needs or the defendant's fair share. Although the majority's formulation of the approximate region in this case is relevant to the factors which I have listed, it fails to provide a definitive standard necessary to identify the appropriate region. Once the relevant region has been identified, the court must then determine the housing need for that region. Again, this information should be solicited from the local planning board, its consultants, the other parties in the case and, if necessary, impartial experts appointed by the court. In the present context, the regional housing need may be defined as the number of new housing units that would be necessary to provide each low and moderate income family in the region with a decent, standard housing unit within the financial means of the family. Rubinowitz, supra note 8, 6 Mich. J.L. Reform at 656. See also M. Brooks, Lower Income Housing; The Planner's Response 14 (Am. Soc'y of Planning Officials 1972); Bisgaier, supra note 2, 99 N.J.L.J. at 738. Finally, the trial court must fix and specify the number of low and moderate cost dwelling units which shall constitute the municipality's fair share of the regional housing need. As noted above, this approximation need not be mathematically precise nor rely exclusively upon any one particular formula or technique. However, it must be specific enough to provide a workable benchmark to guide the formulation and measurement of remedial efforts. Ample discussion of the pertinent factors exists both in the literature [21] and in currently operative fair share allocation programs. [22] These factors include, but are not necessarily limited to: the percentage of the region's vacant, developable land lying within the municipality; whether this land is suitable for low cost housing in terms of its proximity to utilities, transportation facilities and other services; whether it is accessible to available or prospective employment opportunities; the town's population density relative to that in the region at large; whether or not the town's proportion of lower income families exceeds that in the region as a whole and the extent to which the municipality has heretofore violated the precepts of Mt. Laurel by excluding low and moderate income persons. Naturally, the relevance and weight accorded each of these factors will vary from case to case. For example, in a small region where jobs are still relatively concentrated, location of employment opportunities may not be as critical as in a large region with substantial suburbanization of employment. See Rubinowitz, supra note 8, 6 Mich. J.L. Reform at 666 n. 133. Similarly, in cases where exclusionary zoning has already become well entrenched, an allocation plan which overemphasizes satisfaction of local housing needs or immediate availability of job opportunities will reward those towns which have been most exclusionary and hence would subvert the fundamental objective of redressing past indiscretions. See note 21 supra. In the final analysis, it will be the task of the trial court to decide which of the above factors should be weighed most heavily in evaluating the figures submitted by the municipality and the other parties in the case, and in finally fixing a fair share figure.