Reality took a back seat to social engineering today when the New Jersey state Supreme Court again unanimously ruled that every town in our fair state is required to provide "affordable housing." And after consulting their abacus they set forth a number to be built forthwith — 200,000 units, paid for, of course, by you and me.
New Jersey has to build thousands more units for its low-income residents to make up for the 16 years that the state didn't address those needs, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
In a decision addressing New Jersey's long-stalled regulations governing affordable housing, the state's highest court said towns must take into consideration the need for housing that existed within their borders between 1999 and 2015. That's the so-called gap period when the Council on Affordable Housing failed to adopt new rules.
The 6-0 decision, the latest in decades of Mount Laurel rulings governing affordable housing in New Jersey, rejects the assertion that only 37,000 units are needed and that the gap period calculations are not necessary because that need no longer exists.
Remember when Chris Christie was going to rein in our activist judiciary?
Yeah, me neither.
The premise of "affordable housing" itself is blatantly absurd. The social justice warrior crowd unilaterally decided poor people "deserved" to live in whatever town they wanted, regardless of whether or not that town's real estate market was priced out of their reach. Because "fairness."
Apparently working for what you want takes too long, and equality of outcome is better than equality of opportunity anyway. So, free houses for everybody! Ain't socialism grand?
Is everyone entitled to a nice car and fancy clothes too? How about golf club memberships and Disney vacations? Where does all this "fairness" end?
Time was people bought starter houses. Or they rented apartments and saved their pennies. And if you couldn't afford to live in Maplewood or Montclair you settled for Newark or East Orange until you got a better job. That's how my grandparents did it.
But nowadays folks want handouts, not a leg up. And why shouldn't they get to live in Short Hills without paying what everyone else who lives there paid? Our black-robed poobahs agreed, and decided to put a slum in every neighborhood. Except theirs, of course.
So COAH is reincarnated, and high-density, low-quality, traffic-inducing, school-overcrowding tenements will be foisted on us all. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the inhabitants of these housing projects are not always the most stellar of citizens, and they're not known for taking pride in their surroundings. Plus they expect certain "services" to be readily available, and I'm not just talking about check-cashing outlets and cash-for-gold storefronts. Think exotic pharmaceuticals and short-term female companionship, IYKWIMAITYD.
All of which slaughters property values and quality of life for those of us who were here first.
But the affordable housing activists don't care about that. They don't even actually care about "affordable housing." What they do care about are votes, and even in this deeply blue state there are pockets of Republicans to be infiltrated and subverted. Hence the imposition of affordable housing, and the Democrats who inhabit it. Import enough new voters and even the most conservative towns will flip to the Free Stuff side. And then the tax gouging can really begin because hey, this is where the rich guys live.
One of my Facebook friends is a former NJ resident who relocated to North
Carolina. Every time he sees another story about how NJ is screwing the
middle class he immediately adds the #GetOutNow hashtag. He has a point.
Once the slums arrive it'll be too late.
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