TRENTON, N.J. — Roxbury Township and 15 other New Jersey municipalities are facing legal challenges to their affordable housing plans after the Fair Share Housing Center urged state officials to reject them outright.
The nonprofit group, which helped establish the state’s Mount Laurel Doctrine in the 1970s, argued that Roxbury’s plan is “incompatible with the affordable housing rules” because it relied on the Highlands Act build-out report to calculate its obligations.
“Roxbury was looking at a 50% population increase, which is totally unsustainable. The state wants to shoehorn high-density housing into areas that don’t have the infrastructure to support it,” Assemblyman Michael Inganamort (R-Morris) said. “Rural municipalities especially are struggling to find reasonable solutions to satisfy this inane law that continues to destroy their character and quality of life.”
Inganamort said he received a wave of complaints over the weekend from mayors in his district who had also received form letters from the Fair Share Housing Center, challenging their fourth-round affordable housing plans for 2025 to 2035. The group has asked the state’s Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program, which replaced the Council on Affordable Housing, to overturn the plans.
The Mount Laurel Doctrine stems from a series of court rulings beginning in 1975 that require municipalities to provide their “fair share” of affordable housing. Communities that do not comply can face builder’s remedy lawsuits, which allow developers to sue over noncompliance.
“Mount Laurel has morphed into a weapon of overreach, crushing communities and stripping local control. It must be repealed so towns can grow at the pace their residents choose, not at the whim of a faceless bureaucrat with an algorithm,” Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-Sussex) said. “Instead, Democrats are forcing overdevelopment in rural areas, including places that are supposed to be protected by the Highlands Act. The damage cannot be overstated.”
The Highlands Act, signed into law in 2004, restricts development in parts of Bergen, Hunterdon, Morris, Passaic, Somerset, Sussex and Warren counties to preserve water resources and the natural environment. Inganamort said the law reduced property values by restricting development rights but came with the promise of protection against overdevelopment.
“The affordable housing package passed in February 2024 broke that promise,” he said. “We can agree that the Highlands Act and the affordable housing bills are incompatible. The question now is, which supersedes the other? Democrats put Roxbury in this impossible situation. We can protect our water and rural resources or we can have high-density housing in the Highlands. We can’t have both.”
