Housing and Equity
New Jersey’s traditional approach to housing resulted for a long time in concentrated poverty in urban areas and migration of both wealth and jobs to the suburbs. The lack of housing near good jobs reduced opportunities for families with modest incomes to live near where they work. New Jersey will need to leverage market forces and public policy to create housing opportunities for lower-income households in high-opportunity places, including its revitalizing cities, and especially near transit. Simultaneously, the state’s housing and investment policies should support the strategic rebuilding of weak markets to create vibrant, mixed-income communities.

New Jersey is experiencing a housing affordability crisis, one that hits lower-income households particularly hard. But New Jersey has a unique set of laws requiring local governments to zone for affordable housing, and a new report demonstrates that these laws work when enforced.

Both before and after Superstorm Sandy, the trend at the Jersey Shore has been toward higher home values, a smaller percentage of housing units being occupied year-round, and an increasing presence of retirees among year-round residents. Is the Shore becoming a playground for the rich? And specifically rich retirees?

New Jersey is paradoxically one of the most diverse and most segregated states in the nation. The state has grown more diverse over the last two decades, with its non-Hispanic white percentage shrinking from two-thirds of the state population in 2000 to a little more than half as of the 2020 Census, with notable proportional growth among Hispanic and Asian-American communities. But New Jersey’s macro-level diversity often does not translate into integration at the local level, and places that are integrated at the local level don’t always stay that way.

New Jersey faces major challenges with the dual threat of climate change and housing unaffordability. While at face value, these two issues seem to pertain to natural or built environments, respectively, the two are inseparably linked and must be addressed in tandem.

New Jersey is facing an acute housing shortage. Nationally, we are millions of housing units short of meeting demand, and the situation is proportionally worse in New Jersey. That was the big-picture message delivered by Debra Tantleff, founding principal of Tantum Real Estate, to kick off the session on The State of Housing in New Jersey at the New Jersey Planning and Redevelopment Conference on June 16, hosted jointly by New Jersey Future and the New Jersey chapter of the American Planning Association.

In this report, New Jersey Future analyzed housing affordability in each New Jersey municipality, to see where households headed by someone 65 or older have high housing costs. The places where housing cost burden is greatest fall into two groups: towns that are expensive for everyone, and towns that are dominated by larger, single-family housing stock. December 2015.
An interim report, three years after Hurricane Sandy, on New Jersey Future’s groundbreaking local recovery planning manager program, including lessons learned and recommendations. October 2015.

An analysis of household income distributions in the neighborhoods around New Jersey’s transit stations shows that not all station areas offer the benefits of transit access across all income levels. June 2015.

2016 Smart Growth Awards: Alfred C. Koeppe, business leader and champion for economic development in New Jersey, is the recipient of the 2016 Cary Edwards Leadership Award.

March 19, 2014 — A research report recently released by New Jersey Future, Creating Places to Age in New Jersey, evaluates municipalities’ land-use patterns based on how well designed they are to accommodate the changing mobility needs of an aging population.
See all New Jersey Future Blog posts and articles in this category »
Reports, Presentations and Testimony
- Creating Great Places to Age: Aging-Friendly Land-Use Implementation Plan for the Village of Ridgewood (Aug. 2020)
- 03/22/2019: Comments on Executive Order 23 Draft Guidance
- 02/14/2019: Testimony on A2697-S1783
- Creating Great Places to Age: Aging-Friendly Land-use Assessment For the Village of Ridgewood (Aug. 2018)
- Creating Great Places to Age: Land Use Analysis of Aging Friendliness (Westwood Borough, July 2018)
- Rename to: Creating Great Places to Age: Land Use Analysis of Aging Friendliness (Teaneck, Feb. 2019)
- APA Conference Places To Age Best Practices
- New Jersey Future Demographic Trends by Age September 2017
- New-Jersey-Future-Assessment-of-the-NJLIHTC-program
- New Jersey Future Assessing the Federal Approach to Identifying Gentrification 08-16 (Intern Report)
- New Jersey Future 2017 Gubernatorial Platform
- Strategic Recovery Planning Report Maurice River 05-2015
- Strategic Recovery Planning Report Commercial 12-2015
- League of Municipalities Article on Aging in Community April 2016
- Final Jersey City to Proacitvely Test Water Supply Press Release %282%29
- New Jersey Future Housing Affordability and Aging-Friendly Communities
- Housing Affordability and Aging-Friendly Communities Housing Cost-Burden Municipal Data by Municipality
- Housing Affordability and Aging-Friendly Communities Housing Cost-Burden Municipal Data by Cost Burden Rank
- NJFuture-In-Deep-10-15-WEB
- Case Study: Paterson
- Case Study: Jersey City
- Case Study: Hoboken
- Case Study: Camden
- Ripple Effects
- Van Abs: Water Infrastructure in New Jersey's CSO Cities
- Creating Great Places To Age in New Jersey
- Creating Places To Age in New Jersey Municipal Best Practices
- Creating Places To Age in New Jersey municipal data
- Creating Places To Age Bergen-Passaic Supplement
- 03/19/2013: New Jersey Future CDBG-DR comments
- Targeting Transit -- New Jersey Future
- 05-2009 Smart Housing Incentives Act - Summary
- Route 1 Planning Through Partnerships
- 06/17/2011: Amicus brief: Mount Laurel
- Race to the Middle: The Homogenization of New Jersey's Population Density
- Realistic Opportunity? The Distribution of Affordable Housing and Jobs in New Jersey
- Getting to Work 11-08