In 2025, New Jersey will embark on an ambitious plan to build or rehab tens of thousands of homes for low- and middle-income people over the next decade. The plan includes mandates on how many affordable housing units each of the state’s 564 municipalities have to contribute. The state determined it needs more that 84,000 new affordable homes and another 65,000 rehabbed units.
On average, that comes out to about 150 new affordable homes for each locale, according to a Gothamist review of the data. Cities and towns now have until June 2025 to come up with a strategy for how to fulfill their mandates, and then the state has to approve those plans. But some towns are being asked to do more than others.
Some municipalities with higher average incomes and more available developable land received a higher number of affordable building requirements, according to the state’s methodology. Gothamist tallied the top 10 places where New Jersey wants to build the most new affordable housing between 2025 and 2035, according to data from the state Department of Community Affairs. They are: We’ve omitted what are known as “qualified urban aid municipalities” from the top 10 list.
Those municipalities do not face the same mandate to build new affordable housing and instead are given a mandate from the state to rehabilitate existing affordable housing. Newark, for example, is required to rehab more than 4,600 affordable housing units over the next decade, according to the state data..
