BERGEN COUNTYREPUBLICANS ORGANIZATION

23,000 More Housing units in Bergen

BERGEN GOP SAYS CORZINE HOUSING POLICY IS SOCIALIST PLAN TO DESTROY THE SUBURBS

 Call Doria’s Visit to Meadowland: “An insult”  

HACKENSACK – The Bergen County Republican Organization today denounced Gov. Corzine’s signing of the new affordable housing law as another government mandated entitlement program that will ruin the quality of life of many communities, increase property taxes and drive jobs out of the county. 

Gov. Corzine signed the new affordable housing legislation late last week, declaring it was everyone’s “right in the state to have an affordable house.”

Today, Joseph Doria, the chairman of the Department of Community Affairs which will implement the affordable housing laws, will visit the New Jersey Meadowland Commission to explain the burden now placed on municipalities.

“For Joe Doria to come to the meadowlands and tell us our communities have to implement his and Corzine’s socialist agenda is an insult to the county,” sad Freeholder candidate Chris Calabrese.  “Mr. Doria ran Bayonne into the ground, now he has his sights set on destroying Bergen County and making it look like Bayonne.”

According to the latest affordable housing guidelines no longer can towns pay to have their affordable housing mandate shifted to another community that wants or needs housing. That means that Bergen County will have to add 4,689 more affordable housing units and 554 rehabilitated housing units to meet the state mandate. Those figures do not include the thousand or more housing units that would have to be built in East Rutherford to accommodate housing mandates for the 2.2 million square-feet Xanadu mega-mall.

At a 5 to 1 ratio of market rate housing to affordable units granted to builders by the state, Bergen County could end up hosting more than 23,000 new units of housing. Additionally the new rules require one affordable unit be built for every 16 new jobs created in a town and levy a 2.5 percent tax on new non-residential development.

The new eligibility income limits for those eligible for affordable housing, said Calabrese, are more than the median income in most South Bergen Municipalities. Now families of four with incomes exceeding $77,000, and families of five with incomes topping $83,238 will get subsidized housing.

“If this isn’t Socialism, then I don’t know what is,” said Calabrese, a real estate executive.

 Calabrese said adding thousand of units of housing in a down real estate market will only serve to lower home values for existing homes; thereby destroying the investment most people have in their homes. 

Calabrese’s running mate Jeffrey Heller said: “The backers of the new affordable housing regulations have put a bulls eye on the backs of every homeowner in every municipality in the county. “They will pay more in property taxes to supply services for all the housing they want to see built.”

Heller’s home town of Ramsey would be required to add 156 new affordable units -- or 780 total housing units under the 5 to 1 ratio plan. “Maybe Gov. Corzine can drive up to Ramsey and tell us where we are going to put all that housing?” said Heller a former borough councilman.  

JOBS TAX 

Heller said by taxing new development, the Democrats created a new job tax that will make New Jersey uncompetitive with its neighbors. “Jobs and employers are already fleeing the state, these latest affordable housing rules will surely hasten the process,” said Heller,

Paul Duggan, the third Republican freeholder candidate, said typically the Bergen County Freeholders have failed to stand up for the people of the county who don’t want to be inundated with massive new development and higher property taxes.

“Once again we see the seven Democrat members of the freeholder board mum on an important state issue. They aren’t representing the interests of the people of Bergen County. Instead of saddling us with so- called affordable housing, the Democrat freeholder should be working to make a more affordable Bergen County.”

 The Republicans noted that if they were elected they would fight for

alternatives to the Corzine plan and would challenge the state’s new rules in court. “You can bet if we were elected to the freeholder we would be demanding that the county challenge these absurd housing regulations,” said Calabrese.