State Sen. Lesniak targets affordable housing

TRENTON - State Sen. Raymond Lesniak doesn't lack for confidence when he talks about his latest effort to overhaul affordable-housing rules: He calls it "as perfect a bill as is possible."

Some question his certainty, given that an appeals court recently struck down a housing formula that is part of the new proposal. (Lesniak dismissed the ruling as irrelevant to the bill.)

And the Fair Share Housing Center of Cherry Hill doubts whether the measure will create enough low-cost housing, but Lesniak, who once called one of the center's leaders a "stupid imbecile" and an "evil human being," rejects the organization as "illegitimate."

He's so sure of the new measure that he predicts it will pass both legislative houses and land on the governor's desk in 30 days.

The timeline remains to be seen, but what is almost certain is that Lesniak's stamp will be on whatever action the Legislature takes this year to alter the state's controversial affordable-housing rules. How those efforts play out will affect all 566 towns in New Jersey, one of the least affordable places to live in the United States.

"When he takes on an issue, he has this kind of zeal behind it," said the Sierra Club's Jeff Tittel, who has testified at affordable-housing hearings. "He's always been a very determined individual, and when you're on the same side, it's great. When you're not, it's not so much fun,"

Lesniak, a 27-year senator from Union County and one of the state's Democratic power brokers, is pressing ahead after an affordable-housing bill he sponsored passed the Senate in June but stalled in the Assembly.

He played a key role in shaping a revised bill introduced last week in the Assembly, working closely with sponsor and fellow Union County Democrat Jerry Green.

Any reforms adopted by the Legislature must comply with landmark state Supreme Court rulings stemming from lawsuits brought against Mount Laurel. The decisions, made in 1975 and 1983, found that all towns must provide their "fair share" of low- and moderate-income housing and that developers who proved in court that a municipality was excluding such housing could build there at high densities.

Decades later, developers, housing advocates and government officials continue to clash - from the courthouse to the Statehouse - over how best to enforce the so-called Mount Laurel doctrine.

Lesniak, who counts among his signature accomplishments environmental-protection laws and the repeal of the death penalty, turned to affordable-housing changes in 2008. That year, he successfully pushed for a statewide fee on commercial development to pay for affordable housing.

"Once I got involved in that . . . I had to go in all the way to fix it," Lesniak said.

He's been at the center of the debate since introducing the Senate bill (S-1) in January. Like the Assembly bill, it would have abolished the state Council on Affordable Housing, which enforces municipal housing obligations and has been criticized for ineffectiveness and waste.

He had the backing of Gov. Christie, who campaigned on "gutting" COAH.

But Lesniak took heat from affordable-housing advocates, who said he wasn't interested in hearing their concerns, and the state's largest newspaper editorialized that by shutting out those who disagreed with him, he had squandered a historic opportunity to fix the system.

Green says he'll take a more open approach in the coming weeks.

"With Sen. Lesniak, more or less people felt cut out. . . . I want to submit the bill with people involved," Green said.

The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services also wrote two opinions questioning the constitutionality of some versions of S-1, though the new bill appears to address some concerns.

The senator's response? The office doesn't know what it's talking about.

Lesniak, 64, lives alone in Elizabeth, the city where he was born and raised as the son of a factory worker and a homemaker. Just down the street from his home is a drug-infested, 360-unit public-housing complex called Oakwood Plaza.

In May, Lesniak attracted controversy for sponsoring a bill that would have sent $20 million from a state affordable-housing trust fund to a company overseeing Oakwood's rehabilitation. Campaign-finance records show that the developer had contributed more than $10,000 to the senator over the last decade.

Lesniak defended the project, saying at the time that the project would benefit both his neighborhood and everyone else in Elizabeth.

He says the recent rehab of several Elizabeth homes to serve as transitional housing for the homeless is an affordable-housing success story.

"Thank God we're providing that kind of housing for folks who need it, and that has not been the emphasis of COAH to date," he said. "Right now, we're going to provide for habitable, livable housing for many more residents of the state of New Jersey at a much less bureaucratic expense than COAH required."

The new Assembly bill emphasizes rehabbing. Moreover, many towns would have to set aside 20 percent of their vacant land for housing for those households earning up to 150 percent of the regional median income. Developers' fees would help subsidize the effort, though advocates are already concerned about loopholes.

The measure also ties affordable-housing obligations to new development, a mechanism that an appeals court overturned for the second time in three years in an Oct. 8 decision that directed the state to rewrite COAH's rules.

Lesniak said it's "moot" because his legislation will abolish the council anyway.

"S-1 was going to result in virtually no housing for low- and moderate-income households being built, and neither will this bill," said the Fair Share Housing Center's Kevin Walsh.

He accused Lesniak of using his power to get a bad law passed earlier in the year - all to the benefit of his Parsippany law firm Weiner Lesniak, which represents developers and planning boards.

The senator said he has a huge firm, and based on Walsh's standard, no one who works could introduce legislation. A legislative ethics committee recently threw out a related complaint.

Lesniak said that while he dislikes the tactics of Fair Share, he engages with "legitimate" advocates.

The Rev. Bruce Davidson of the Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry in New Jersey said Lesniak had reached out to him after S-1 passed and was attentive to his suggestions. But he said advocates have major concerns about the new bill, which have not been adequately addressed.

Lesniak himself has a history of changing positions on the issue.

For example, in 2008 he supported a law that ended the controversial practice of wealthier towns paying poorer ones to accept their housing obligations, but then tried to restore some of those deals in S-1. The new bill doesn't mention the matter. He also supported a 2.5 percent commercial-development fee that year, which S-1 stopped; the new bill phases it back in.

One challenge is that few outside a small circle of lawyers, bureaucrats, and planners even grasp the rules.

"It took me two years of intense study to understand this," Lesniak said, "and that's why it's so difficult to get legislators and government officials to understand the complexity that started with Mount Laurel and just snowballed into a convoluted, unmanageable system."