Fulop responds to rivals on housing, talks Mt. Laurel in Jersey City/Hoboken

At a campaign launch event in North Bergen for the LD-33 Democrats for Change ticket, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop discussed his housing policies and responded to gubernatorial rivals in an interview with HudPost.

“I’m not even going to take shots at either of those two,” said Fulop in reference to comments made by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. Mikie Sherrill to HudPost about Jersey City rental prices. “I’m going to talk about that we got the most comprehensive plan around affordability, and the reality is that one city can’t do it alone.”

“We’ve built more housing than anybody else. Supply is part of the conversation, both market rate and affordable housing.”

One of Fulop’s top policy initiatives for Hudson County is ending Jersey City and Hoboken’s exemption from Fair Share housing obligations.

“Mount Laurel needs to be revisited on those exemptions,” said Fulop. “There’s close to 30 municipalities, roughly, that were exempted originally, and the demographics have changed in many of those, and they’re not contributing to the affordable housing numbers for the state of New Jersey.”

Under Mount Laurel Doctrine, New Jersey municipalities that are resistant to expanding their housing supply with multifamily developments – through zoning and planning changes – face builder’s remedy lawsuits. Those complaints give judges the power to override municipal officials and approve developments that generate affordable housing, usually 15%-20% of units.

Regarding that issue, Sherrill told HudPost “I would caution a little bit about builder’s remedy being the solution to all of our affordable housing problems, because we’ve seen across my district often that involves building huge luxury apartment buildings to offset the cost of a couple affordable units.”

In an effort to decrease the prevalence of builder’s remedy lawsuits and accelerate housing development, Fulop wants to tie state funding that municipalities receive to  Fair Share compliance.

Fulop explained, “I think when a mayor says that you’re forcing us to build, which is important, but I need more resources for schools or sewers or roads because of the infrastructure demands, those are reasonable things.”

“I think the state needs to reward those that are participating, we don’t do that properly today.”

Fulop is facing off against Baraka, Sherrill, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, NJEA Pres. Sean Spiller, and former state Senate Pres. Stephen Sweeney in the June 10th Democratic primary.