Orange County NC Website
154 LAND USE AND ENVIRONMENT 10 • <br /> The Impact of Mt. Laurel II on Broader Issues <br /> It is impossible to understand the success of the Orange <br /> County inclusionary system and why,for instance,5,000 persons <br /> would attend a lottery for the right to purchase fifty-eight small <br /> condominium units priced between $72,000 and $95,000, deed <br /> restricted and price controlled,22 without understanding the in- <br /> flationary spiral that hit the California housing market in the <br /> 1970s and early 1980s. So, too, it is impossible to understand <br /> what is happening in New Jersey without historical perspective. <br /> New Jersey, until relatively recently, was a strong home-rule <br /> state with a political tradition23 that tolerated and encouraged <br /> exclusionary housing to a virtually unparalleled degree. The <br /> New Jersey Supreme Court developed a doctrine of presumptive <br /> validity of municipal ordinances that was used to virtually rub- <br /> berstamp municipal action, including five-acre zoning through- <br /> out an entire municipality and, the exclusion of trailer parks. <br /> Since the state had no income taxes prior to 1974, and up to that <br /> time property taxes supported everything, local governments <br /> learned to manipulate land use policies for local tax advantage. <br /> More important, local governments, the training grounds for <br /> future state politicians, were virtually lawless in their adminis- <br /> tration of land use approvals and adherence to enacted Stan- - <br /> dards. Lawyers functioned in this morass as lackeys to the <br /> "public will" or as peddlers of political favors. It is no accident <br /> that New Jersey, the nation's most densely populated state <br /> today, stands forty-eighth in the nation in the number of man- <br /> - ufactured homes or trailers that have been erected in rela- <br /> tion to its housing stock.24 Trailers have not been permitted <br /> under most zoning ordinances because they are perceived to <br /> area at the time of this writing—$2;500 would just support a 519.000 mortgage. <br /> The courts have permitted some flexibility with respect to income figures and <br /> family size, in that a two-person family would be assumed to have a lower <br /> mecian income than a five-person family, and housing prices are affected by <br /> the income levels. <br /> Note that the income level is what determines affordability, and afford- <br /> ability—not costs—is what determines housing prices. If interest rates or <br /> property taxes or insurance costs rise, housing costs must fall. <br /> 22 Breckenfeld. note 5 supra. at 149. <br /> 23 3 N.Williams,J.,American Land Planning Law:Lund Use and(hr Policy <br /> Power # 66005 (1974). <br /> 24 The problem of siting mobile homes in New Jersey was studied by the <br /> New Jersey legislature (–Report and Recommendations of the Mobile Home <br /> Study Commission,– Oct. 1980) by the Legislative Study Commission asp- <br /> , <br />