Hornik: COAH funds should be used to help Sandy Victims
By Mayor Jonathan Hornik, Marlboro Township
Forgotten among the latest round of finger-pointing and investigations regarding the use of Superstorm Sandy funds are displaced low and moderate-income homeowners and renters who need help. This immediate and pressing need, combined with resources available from communities like Marlboro Township, in the form of affordable housing trust funds, present a unique opportunity for regional cooperation. Now all we need is some action in Trenton.
The funds, collected from developer fees, now totaling at least $180 million state-wide (and which the State has been trying to take for its own budget problems), are to be used to meet the need for affordable housing under the Supreme Court’s Mt. Laurel rulings. Those cases decreed that every town has an obligation to provide for its region’s need for affordable housing. We have long argued that the doctrine should be meaningfully applied – let’s build the housing where the need is the greatest.
Yet to this day the planners in Trenton wrangle over rules to determine how towns must address their affordable housing, going on 15 years now, when it should be painfully obvious that the need for our community (and our region) is staring us in the face. Current state laws prohibit Marlboro from helping those communities who are in desperate need for housing assistance after Sandy. There is no mechanism for Marlboro to spend its trust funds for the benefit of, for example, Union Beach or the Highlands, because there are no rules that allow us to do so. We can’t fulfill a fundamental tenet of Mt. Laurel, and help our neighbors because the authority to do so isn’t there. And why not?
Towns used to be able to share resources in this fashion under the now-vilified regional contribution agreements (RCAs). Under RCAs, towns which had money from development fees could use it to build or rehabilitate housing in other towns where the need was most acute and resources low. But the Legislature outlawed that type of cooperation (to the distress, I might add, of most “receiving” towns). In any event, the RCA framework can be re-utilized now to allow Marlboro and other towns throughout the State to aid people in Monmouth, Ocean or Atlantic counties. The local mechanism is in place, as well. Most municipalities have or retain administrative agents who oversee the use and disbursement of available funds to qualified households for established affordable housing purposes such as rehabilitation or “affordability assistance,” including the use of such funds for emergency purposes. The last thing we need is new rules to address an urgent need especially when the administrative structure already exists.
Over a year ago, I pleaded with legislative leaders to allow Marlboro, and similarly situated towns, to use their trust funds to help our sister municipalities most impacted by Sandy. Nothing happened. Unfortunately, nothing has happened for a lot of people in need as well. Trenton, let us do our part and help our neighbors who are in desperate need of assistance.
More from my site
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[…] Declan O’Scanlon, R-Monmouth, issued a statement today welcoming Marlboro Mayor Jon Hornik’s support of Regional Contribution Agreements (RCA) for use in getting Sandy victims back into their […]
hereees johnny again, anything for a little publicity. he hasnt come up with a plan to use the money in his home town of marlboro for 6 years now. but he wants to buy so publicity with the mo9ney. he dropped the ball and had all this time to look for projects to help his town, all the while using some of the money to feed his lawyer buddies. take a ride on texas rd, there are houses that have no front door. how about getting some money to fix those low income houses up? this is the same mayor that used up over 105,000 dollars on cops in schools and when on ever talk show and radio show he could. then when the school board said enough, he couldn’t get the cops out of the schools fast enough,( now that he would have to pay out of his budget) if he was so worried about school safety he would have kept the p.d. ther at his expense, but the cost wasn’t worth the publicity . he loves spending other peoples money to self promote. he cant even get the potholes filled, the chrismas trees picked up, or the leaves removed in his own town, quit worrying about getting free press and do your job in marlboro.
[…] Hornik called for the reinstatement of Regional Contribution Agreements (RCA), in order to unlock $184 million in COAH funds to help residents impacted by Superstorm Sandy rebuild their homes in an OpEd piece published on MMM and PolitickerNJ. […]