Address Rising Housing costs so NJ citizens can li...

Feed

Image 1 of 5

Author: Shailesh Gala

Started: June 5, 2006, 5:36:37 pm

Target: NJ Governer, State Legislators & News paper editors

Category: Economy & Business

Supporters:

167

Goal:

100,000

Goal Progress:

Status

Active

Honourable Governer Corzine & State Legislative Members:

We would like to point your attention to one of the pressing issue faced by many NJ citizens. In last few years, House prices in NJ have increased to significantly high values, and with increasing interest rates, it is making it very difficult for Middle class folks to afford decent housing in NJ. Even though many of us have significantly hige education & income levels compared to National standard, but are finding it difficult to afford a house, especially in Northern & Central part of the state. We would like to point out few observations from the Brookings institute,

* New Jersey is the 5th least affordable housing in the nation.
* New Jersey workers have some of the longest commutes in the nation.
* Although wages in New Jersey are very high, more than onefifth of homeowners (about 635,000 households) still spend more than 35% of their income on housing costs.
* During the entire decade of the 1990â€™s two-thirds of New Jerseyâ€™s municipalities built ZERO multifamily
housing units.

We want your office to consider approaches recommended by experts to make housing more affordable in NJ. Some of the recommendations we support are:

* Promote Smarter development patterns that can help level the playing field between established communities and newer ones; and also between poor and wealthy places.
* Greater housing choices which will benefit families by improving their access to educational, employment and other opportunities; it will also benefit businesses by enabling workers to live closer to their places of employment.
* New Jersey should consider cabinet-level realignment as well as other interdepartmental and coordination reforms to bring together agencies and programs with strong potential synergy.

Many of us have lived in NJ their entire life, while many of us have chosen to relocate to NJ as it offers many economic choices. We love the state and feel part of the community. Today we are facing this acute housing issue that is making it difficult for us to consider other options.

We would truely appreciate if your office takes this issues in consideration and implements appropriate policies.

Thanking you.

Brookings institute article available at,

http://www.brookings.edu/metro/speeches/20060501_Trenton.pdf