Morristown is considering a plan to build 73 units of affordable housing at Coal and Center streets, near train tracks on a former junkyard and coal plant property in a Whippany River flood plain.
Regan Development, the proposed builder, appears ready to deal with environmental concerns, said Pastor Sidney Williams of the Bethel AME Church, which hosted a presentation last week. The Pastor said the development could address a serious need for workforce housing in town.
“My sense is, it looks like a good plan… this is really affordable. That’s a good thing,” he told MorristownGreen.com last week. He said the presentation was held at the request of Mayor Tim Dougherty.
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Phil Abramson from Jonathan Rose Companies, the town planner, said a debate over affordable housing at another pending project, the Speedwell Avenue redevelopment, has underscored residents’ desire for more affordable housing.
“What we’ve heard surrounding Speedwell is a need for affordable housing,” Phil said. “This achieves that objective.”
If Regan Development is designated as developer of the municipally owned site, it will be up to that company to ensure that all environmental cleanup obligations are satisfied, Phil said. One part of the property formerly was a junkyard; another was a coal gasification plant. Public Service Electric & Gas has performed remediation on that parcel, Phil said.
Based in Ardsley, N.Y., Regan Development has a good track record of securing funding for affordable housing projects through a federal tax credit program.
“Only a handful of developers around the state consistently get these credits, and he’s one of them,” the planner said. The fact that the project is intended to reclaim a “brownfield” should weigh in its favor for the funding program, Phil said.
Basically, the program gives investors tax breaks for backing affordable housing projects. These projects must offer low rents to tenants who qualify.
Local organizations involved in affordable housing around Morristown said the proposal caught them by surprise.
“It seems like a high-density plan. It seems like more than might be workable,” said Betsey Hall of Homeless Solutions Inc. “I’m sorry it hasn’t had more community input and more time to work on what the possibilities are.”
In 2009, a controversial proposal to construct a 70-unit affordable housing building on Early Street was withdrawn . Some council members and citizens warned that concentrating so many units in one high-rise location, rather than integrating them throughout market-rate developments, would create a ghetto. The town’s lack of an affordable housing plan complicated that situation.
Meanwhile, there has been some criticism of town negotiations with developers of the massive Speedwell Avenue redevelopment to reduce the percentage of affordable units there from 20 percent to 5 percent.
At a recent hearing on that project, the Mayor said he wanted the town to partner with nonprofits like Homeless Solutions to build affordable housing.
Jodi Miciak, a co-chair of the Morris County Housing Alliance who has been critical of the revised Speedwell plan, said she wants more information about Regan proposal for Coal Avenue and Center Street.
“We support development of affordable housing, but we want to make sure it’s really the economic development that everyone wants for Morristown,” she said.
Councilwoman Raline Smith-Reid told The Daily Record she is studying the plan.
Pastor Sidney said Regan Development sketched plans for:
- 73 units of affordable units in two stories atop an open parking level, in case of flooding
- Heavy duty construction to minimize vibrations from passing trains
- Solar panels and an energy-efficient design to cut tenants’ utility bills in half
- Project financing via federal tax credits, which would require that rents be affordable to residents who earn up to 60 percent of the area median income of $87,000.
According to the Pastor, Second Ward residents who attended the presentation were given assurances that the site would be safe from an environmental standpoint.
A one-bedroom apartment in the facility would rent for $680 a month, a two-bedroom unit would be $800, and three bedrooms would be $929, Pastor Sidney said.
To qualify, he said, a single individual could not exceed an annual income of $37,000. A couple could not exceed $42,000. For a family of three, the threshhold would be $47,000. For four people, it would be $52,700; for five, $57,000, and for a family of six, $60,000.
“This is really affordable. That’s a good thing,” Pastor Sidney said.
The downside, he said, is that the income guidelines still preclude a lot of people who are struggling to survive.
“The working poor are not poor enough to get into that building,” he said, noting that federal tax credit are based on complex formulas that must take into account construction economics that allow profits for builders.
While a new employee earning $34,000 at the Morris County Jail probably would qualify for this project, Pastor Sidney said, a new teacher making $47,000 in the Morris School District probably would not.
“Who gets left out? The guys closer to the median income, the working class. They get stuck in the middle,” said Pastor Sidney, who was trained in economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s a policy issue for beyond Morris County and Morristown.”
