Advocates from the Fair Share Housing Center believe that housing affordability is a serious issue in this state, and that for too long local zoning laws intentionally excluded the poor and members of minorities from living in many communities. These points are valid and accurate. However, the practices encouraged by the FSHC, while well-meaning, are not necessarily the right ones for our state.
Information about the FSHC:
For decades, the Fair Share Housing Center has been seen by the courts as representing low income New Jerseyans who need affordable housing. They are a party to nearly every lawsuit related to affordable housing - leading to tends of millions of dollars in municipal spending (and millions alone in legal and planner expenses for towns).
The new Affordable Housing law in New Jersey provides FSHC with even more power, but also provides for absolutely no oversight. The state has no say over who is on their board of directors, how their board is appointed, how they raise their money, what lawsuits they choose to engage in, or what positions they take, even if these positions are contrary to good housing policy.
Despite the enormous the power FSHC wields, the organization does not provide a list of donors or disclose this information on their 990 forms, nor do they provide information about the money they receive directly from court settlements. See the company's 990 filings here.
In many cases, large for-profit developers use a FSHC lawsuit as a fig leaf to force large, mostly market-rate projects into communities without paying for the associated infrastructure and service needs of those projects. Because of the lack of transparency, it is not known whether these developers are among the financial contributors to FSHC.
Their board of directors is made up of passionate housing advocates but does not include economists and land use experts who could ensure that their advocacy represents good public policy.
Fair Share does not have professional planners or policy experts on staff and while they promote their activities as helping the urban poor, displaced, and minority populations, many of the actual laws, policies, and projects that they have pushed so aggressively do little to help these groups.
FSHC's focus on ensuring that affluent suburban communities address decades of exclusionary zoning is an important and relevant part of addressing housing needs in New Jersey - but it should not be their only focus, or lead to results that are contrary to good land use planning and effective outcomes.
FSHC's very narrow vision of what constitutes success, described in their report: Dismantling Exclusionary Zoning: New Jersey's Blueprint for Overcoming Segregation - Fair Share Housing Center, linked below.