By Sunayana Prabhu
RUMSON – While the borough is making strides toward meeting its affordable housing obligations by the 2025 deadline, residents at the latest council meeting were upset about some aspects of the process.
At the Oct. 10 council meeting, the council adopted four ordinances pertaining to the borough’s ongoing affordable housing measures. These ordinances made changes to the borough’s zoning code, deemed necessary to make progress toward meeting its affordable housing obligations.
“Rumson has been compliant with their obligation for the past 30 years,” professional planner Kendra Lelie explained at the meeting. The first and second rounds of obligations covered a timeframe from 1987 to 1999 and the borough is currently in the third round, covering a much longer period from 1999 to 2025.
As previously reported by the borough, Rumson’s affordable housing obligation was determined to be 603 new affordable residential units but the borough has “scarce resources,” Lelie said. “We don’t have enough land to support that.”
Subsequently, an order entered by the New Jersey Supreme Court in June 2021 resulted in a settlement creating a realistic development opportunity for the construction of 51 affordable housing units by 2025. The 552 affordable housing units of un- met need will be “dealt with in a softer way,” Lelie said, by creating “overlay zoning” and additional types of zoning ordinances.
The borough is required to construct nine units per a Market to Affordable Program that was part of this June 2021 order.
If the borough fails to meet its obligations, it will lose immunity from builder’s remedy lawsuits which could force Rumson to approve high-density housing developments. Losing immunity from builder’s remedy suits puts the municipality’s zoning powers at risk and grants builders the authority to dictate development in the town.
The ordinances approved Tuesday also address “micro-requirements” that the affordable units must satisfy.
Of the 51 units, 38 are “real units,” Lelie explained, and 13 are “bonus credits.” Every rental unit accounts for a bonus credit. According to Lelie, the borough has already made progress on providing the 13 units since meeting its 2015 primary obligations with five existing units. Two units were recently created of which one is a rental unit and the other is a sale unit and six additional units are on their way within the next year.
Of the remaining 38 units, half must qualify as family rental units, while the other half must be equally divided between affordable rental units and senior units.
The ordinances approved Tuesday allow 13 family rental units at 49 West River Road which is the vacant Bank of America lot; 12 age-restricted units on Carton Street; and the provision for additional units in the borough’s downtown business district with a mixed-use, multifamily overlay option.
“We maxed out on our senior rentals” with the Carton Street housing plan, said Lelie.
The potential future development on the Bank of America site will have to go through “the normal channels of site plan approval and that will be before the planning board,” said Lelie.
She clarified that the ordinances approved by the council do not pertain to a particular project but allow for multifamily housing to occur by providing guidelines for what can be developed on the site.
Borough administrator Thomas Rogers said the borough has to further “negotiate with the Fair Share Housing Center as well, which we’ve tended to do for a number of months now. So we’ll actually try to get them to kind of work with us on it. And then we’ll go forward.”
Once a plan is approved by the court, then an approved developer would go through the planning board process to develop a particular site.
Several residents at the meeting expressed concern about the length of time between notice and adoption of the ordinances and about the increase in the number of units planned for the West River Road site.
“Most of us are here tonight, not at all to oppose affordable housing,” said resident Jeffrey Pedone, but because “a lot of us feel that that is too many (units).”
Resident Daniel Mee thought 60 days was “not a lot of time for us as a community to get up to speed on a complicated topic.”
Mee also asked if the borough intentionally consolidated “all of the affordable housing units so far” in the downtown area.
“That’s for now,” Lelie said. “We’ve looked at other sites that are commercial sites that are either underutilized or vacant and potentially doing new developments in those areas.”
But, she assured, “I’m a pretty strong proponent of smart growth and making sure that where affordable housing is placed” is convenient for residents so they have “access to all of those amenities and necessities that everyone wants.”
Resident Vita Larney said she was concerned about high-density housing and the number of people living in “those 13 units.”
“Typically, for a one-bedroom house, you would have one or two people; for a two-bedroom house, you may have one or two people or three people,” Lelie said. “It all depends on the families that apply for the units.”
The article originally appeared in the October 12 – 18, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
