Housing and Equity

Recently-released property tax data from the Department of Community Affairs have reminded us once again that New Jerseyans pay a lot in property taxes. Indeed, New Jersey residents pay the highest property tax bills in the country.

Despite New Jersey’s urban resurgence in the years since the Great Recession, and despite concerns about gentrification expressed in popular media, high-poverty neighborhoods have not gone away.

Where we build our housing, the type of housing we build, and for whom we build it affects our environment, our quality of life, and how segregated a state we will live in.

New Jersey, along with states across the country, is confronting a public health threat: lead in drinking water. The primary source is lead service lines (LSLs), hose-sized pipes containing some amount of lead that connect water mains under the streets to buildings. But which communities are most at risk?

A look at the places with the characteristics that typically attract Millennials, but that aren’t attracting New Jersey Millennial out-migrants, suggests that housing costs could be a key factor in where these out-migrants decide to live.

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.

There is a significant mismatch in New Jersey between where large numbers of older residents live and which municipalities are most prepared to accommodate them. This report matches every municipality against four age-friendliness indicators, and analyzes the degree to which New Jersey’s older residents are living in places that, from a land-use perspective, are not prepared to accommodate their changing needs. January 2014.