Jacqueline Suarez has heard it too many times. A municipality gets its affordable housing obligation, and the lawyers come out.
The commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs decided to try something different. Instead of fighting the resistance, she walked straight into it.
She went directly to municipalities that had previously sued over their affordable housing obligations, Suarez said at the NJ Future annual conference last week in New Brunswick. Rather than tell them what they had to do, she asked what they didn’t want.
What they didn’t want, it turned out, was someone from Trenton coming in and telling them what to build. Fair enough, Suarez said. But you still have a responsibility. So, let’s talk about what your community actually needs, she told them.
That conversation — repeated across the state — is changing things.
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The first fix was the language.
Even the word “obligation” was part of the problem. When you tell a municipality it has an obligation, Suarez said, you’ve already lost the room. Shift it to responsibility — to their own residents, their own kids, their own aging parents — and the conversation changes.
The reframe she settled on is lifecycle housing. Not affordable housing. Not low-income units. Lifecycle housing.
Suarez raised sample questions.
Do you want your kids to be able to move back after college without living in your basement until they’re 35? Do you want your aging parents to stay in the town where they raised you? Do you want the nurses and first responders who serve your community to be able to afford to live there?
Of course, officials said.
That’s what we’re talking about, Suarez told them.
The DCA launched NJ Homes — Housing Opportunities for Municipal Equity Success — as the vehicle for that conversation. The results have been notable: two municipalities that had previously litigated their affordable housing obligations joined the first cohort of 10 under the program. They didn’t just comply. They signed up.
“When people feel like they have the tools to figure out how to do the work, the conversation shifts,” Suarez said.
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DCA is now building on that momentum. The Affordable Builders Club — the ABC — launches this month, with information sessions in July. The goal is to move from one cohort of 10 municipalities to two cohorts of 30, starting in July and October.
The department also is expanding who it considers a developer:
- Faith-based organizations with land they don’t know what to do with;
- Emerging developers being trained in partnership with NJRA, HMFA and EDA;
- Community nonprofits;
- Anyone willing to build smaller and think longer-term than the traditional market-rate developer looking to maximize the bottom line.
Suarez made one promise at the NJ Future conference that landed with the crowd: thousands of units underway within a year.
She said hold her to it.
