The Mount Laurel Doctrine and the quest for affordable housing
The Mount Laurel Doctrine and the quest for affordable housing
The shortage of affordable housing in this country is well-known. And history has shown how hard it can be to get affordable-housing projects off the ground.
In the 1960s, the township of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, moved to condemn dilapidated housing in an area where many Black residents lived. Worried about her neighbors, a Mount Laurel resident named Ethel Lawrence proposed a plan for an affordable-housing project that could help the displaced residents find homes. But her plans were flatly denied under the township’s zoning codes. Outraged, Lawrence and a group of activists took the township to court to fight for the right to build affordable housing.
Roshan Abraham wrote about the affordable-housing battle that ensued in The New York Times. Abraham joined “Marketplace” host Amy Scott to discuss his piece. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Amy Scott: So tell me about Ethel Lawrence. Who was she, and why did she want to build affordable housing in her community?
Roshan Abraham: Ethel Lawrence was a mother; she had been a schoolteacher. She had been very involved in her community. So, she kind of took it upon herself to join up with local activist groups to try to get affordable housing built for her family and for her extended family. Her family had been in Mount Laurel for six generations, they had been there a long time. And it was very personal for her that they be able to remain in Mount Laurel.
Scott: And so ultimately, she had to sue to try to get this housing built. Can you tell us about the court case that led to the Mount Laurel Doctrine?
Roshan: Yeah, so she was connected with a group of young lawyers from a law firm called Camden Legal Services. And they all agreed that she would be a great lead plaintiff for this lawsuit that essentially was trying to get affordable housing built in Mount Laurel. The state Supreme Court eventually decided in 1975 that not only did Mount Laurel have to build its fair share of affordable housing, but the entire state of New Jersey would be required to build its fair share of affordable housing. And that led to really like 50 years’ worth of back and forth trying to block housing, which got us to what we have today.
Scott: So this doctrine is now state law in New Jersey. How much affordable housing has been built as a result?
Abraham: There have been 70,000 units of affordable housing built since 1980 as a result of the Mount Laurel Doctrine.
Scott: Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but as the headline reads in your story, it’s a win.
Abraham: It doesn’t sound like a lot. Yeah. It’s not as much as the need. And I think a housing assessment of New Jersey found something like 200,000 units are still needed for the most low-income households. But yeah, it’s way more than would have been without Mount Laurel, I think most people agree.
Scott: And just as an example of how hard it is to get affordable housing built, you mentioned a development in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in your piece. I think it’s 50-some units, and it’s taken 25 years to build.
Abraham: Yeah, so that was a development where affordable housing was part of the original plan for development. For whatever reason, when the housing was constructed, the single-family-home units were built first. And then the affordable-housing units, which were always planned to be part of the development, were going to be built after, but then after the residents moved into the single-family homes, they began protesting the idea of having that affordable housing right next to them. So, there were tons of back-and-forth lawsuits. After the affordable-housing units were built, the complaints just seem to disappear. No one was protesting anything, nothing. None of the sort of apocalyptic scenarios that they envisioned came to pass. And yeah, it seems to be doing well.
Scott: This kind of resistance plays out in communities all across the country. Are you seeing other states pursuing similar measures as New Jersey?
Abraham: Different states are trying different versions of Mount Laurel. But I don’t think that any area has quite the same rigorous system as the Mount Laurel system, which both has this system of allotments based on what the income levels are of the people who actually live in the town, has really robust funding mechanisms to actually build that housing, and has both a judicial and now legislative framework that legally mandates that to be built.
Scott: Did Ethel Lawrence ever get to see affordable housing built in her community, Mount Laurel?
Abraham: No, but before she passed, one of the lawyers from Camden Legal Services showed her a plot of land that was in Mount Laurel that is named after her and that exists today called the Ethel Lawrence Houses, but she never lived to see the actual housing that was built there. Some of her relatives’ grandchildren are living in affordable housing that was created through the Mount Laurel Doctrine, but Ethel herself never lived to see that affordable housing built.
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