Working for Smart Growth:
More Livable Places and Open Spaces

 

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 Future Blog
New Report Highlights Link Between Local Zoning and Housing Affordability

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.

Ten Years After Sandy, a Look at Population and Housing Trends at the Jersey Shore

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 NJF Report Explores How to Promote Racial Integration in NJ Municipalities

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.

The Risk to Our Roofs: Considering and Harnessing the Climate-Housing Nexus

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.

The State of New Jersey’s Housing Market: We Need More

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.

Articles and Stories
Creating Places To Age: Housing Affordability and Aging-Friendly Communities

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.

In Deep: Helping Sandy-Affected Communities Address Vulnerability and Confront Risk

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.

OFF TRACK? An Assessment of Mixed-Income Housing around New Jersey’s Transit Stations

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.

Business Leader and Champion for Economic Development Wins Leadership Award

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.

New Jersey Future Op-Ed Button
Many Older Residents in New Jersey Live in Aging-Unfriendly Places

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

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