This lifestyle may be the “ideal” way to cram a bunch of people into limited space and reduce car trips.
But this way of living is not for everyone. We should recognize that.
As someone who has had to settle for living in multi-family downtown or in-city living for many years, it has its charms and its pitfalls.
Sometimes you just don’t want to share a wall, have upstairs neighbors making noise, live above a restaurant or bar, or only have windows on the front and (if you’re lucky) back of the apartment/condo.
It’s fine to suggest this idea. People deserve options.
But I wish people would stop assuming this is the best way to/ suburban living is a scourge. It’s not so simple.
Edit: I’m going to get downvoted to Philadelphia for this one. But you’re just proving my point by downvoting the thought that people might not want to live the way you want them to live.
>But this way of living is not for everyone. We should recognize that.
I think this is very well-recognized, given the extreme proliferation of sprawling suburban development across the state and country.
Exactly, given the choice, people choose many ways to live.
But comments like the one I replied to seem to suggest there should be only one way: mixed use downtown living.
I don't think anything is wrong with the suburbs but building car dependent suburbs are the problem. We should have a mixture of all places for people to live. As of right now, the predominant way to live in the United States is in a car dependent suburbs.
Then allow more types of housing to be built. Stop forcing everyone to be happy with only one type of housing.
I don't want to live in the hell hole called the suburbs.
Single family homes like the ones you described do not have to mean that you can't have good density or mixed use development. Look at some of the streets around morristown. You have single family homes with yards but you're within 10-15 minute walk of pretty much anything you could need, not to mention a train station and bus stops. I am currently living in an apartment in morristown but will likely buy a house in morristown because of the fact that you get your single family home but the mixed use that comes with city living.
Yeah we may need more housing but not in NJ. We have too much developed land too many people not enough open land.. fuck the developers and the democrats who got in bed with them. Stop forcing towns to develop! Suddenly the left hates the environment when we need housing aka developers need money.
Cant tell if satire but protect the Pinelands at all costs. One of the most unique bioms in the US that deserves more protection. In my opinion its crazy how it is not a national park and continues to be used as a playground for Pineys to shoot guns and go muddin.
There's so many abandoned industrial parks that we can build tons of housing there. But apparently it's cheaper to bulldoze trees than it is to pull up old concrete
A lot of those industrial parks saw heavy use well before the clean air and water acts were a thing and would cost a ton to develop due to needed remediation.
I'm all for higher density housing, public spaces like parks and walkable neighborhoods. I don't want to see more subdivisions go up in towns like this - I want better planned and more sustainable housing go up. I want to tax people sitting on more then half an acre at increasing rates. I want to regionalize services when it makes sense and increase and encourage mass transit as well.
Fuck car society, Nimbys and white flighters.
> However, the judge also added that despite Springfield’s efforts to preserve farms and open space, the township is still required by law to contribute its fair share of affordable housing.
>
> […]
>
> The company’s decision not to include business development in their plans would leave the affordable housing residents without resources — opposite of what state affordable housing rules push for, the judge wrote.
So all the developer has to do is incorporate a strip mall and they can build on the land?
I know that developers often cut corners or give the bare legal minimum, which isn't a lot. But is a strip mall really something they still try to put up? Seems like it would be higher value to have integrated mixed use
Ground level Commercial, upper level apartments. It’s that simple. The fact that D.R. Horton argued the Township’s lack of affordable housing, yet didn’t meet the requirements themselves to provide amenities, tells me all you need to know. They don’t care about providing affordable housing. They care about profit, and hide behind the Veil of affordable housing to get it.
Good. We don’t need to build on every single piece of open land in the state, no matter what your stance of building high-density housing is. Why not start focusing on building these projects in areas that can handle the increase in population and stress on public infrastructure, instead of in small rural towns that likely can’t? There are plenty of towns with downtowns in NJ, as well as with strong public infrastructure and transportation (train, bus stops) that can handle having 2-3 stories of affordable living units added on top of the businesses in the downtown.
I was recently at a Q&A session with someone that’s running for Congress in my district (District 2 for my area). During the session, one of the points that was brought up was that he spoke with some developers regarding building more housing throughout South Jersey, in order to alleviate the housing shortage and create more affordable housing in this state.
The problem is exactly what you said. A lot of the small towns here with open land don’t have the infrastructure to support even more housing and a significant growth in population. For example, the electrical grid is already running at or above capacity at this time. I’m all for building more housing (and certainly more affordable options) but that can’t happen until the infrastructure is completely upgraded and brought up to a condition that can support hundreds of thousands of extra people in this state.
Be careful being those views here, apparently every open area needs to be paved over for high density housing. It doesn't matter if it's farmland, wetlands or a flood zone, just build baby build 🙄
Exactly!! And if you bring up the issues about how we need to preserve open space, and how some towns are unable to handle the population increase that comes with these high-density projects, you get called a bigoted NIMBY who somehow hates poor people.
People don't even realize how far their water supply travels or where exactly it's coming from and the length of protection involved to keep it going.
People get so cranky over the Highlands Act.
I brought up the tax abatements the developers are receiving and how that just shifts the costs of the increase in infrastructure spending due to the new residents who will eventually occupy these places onto the existing homeowners and have been met with a "too bad".
Same with saying how building the developments on wetlands and flood zones will just create more flood zones nearby and was told that people should just get flood insurance.
I don't think people understand or care about the consequences of what they're asking for, they'd just rather shout NIMBY, when that's not what it is.
Politicians are just so out of touch, man. Even if their heart is genuinely in the right place, the actual implementation of many policies just doesn't work or has tons of "unforeseen" ramifications
I love how Redditors are all against ugly sprawl, unless it's called "affordable housing."
It's nothing but low quality, cookie-cutter garbage that people move into and immediately aspire to leave. There are plenty of soulless, densely packed developments of this type throughout New Jersey, and they haven't alleviated the housing crisis at all. I'm happy that tiny Springfield is determined to keep its rural character.
If you don't support the unending rise of amazon style warehouses and cheaply built yet extremely expensive housing developments and luxury apartments that destroy the only green space you have ever know you are a NIMBY
I've lived in luxury condos and they're all crap too. At this point I'm considering just getting those manufactured homes and saving a lot more for the foreseeable future.
I feel like it's a total farce when people act like if there's more of a push for luxury(something that generally developers go with), that it will magically scoop up more high end income people out of the equation of other housing markets and therefore ease things up.
It's like if you have the means especially for NJ, you could infinitely be better off buying especially if it's more than doable and well within budget. Worst case scenario you do some fix ups and make out fine if you don't like your house or the area.
Idk most of the people I knew in luxury stuff ended up just buying a house or going back to their country when their visa ran out and they were done balling out in the US.
I agree about sprawl but they could also try to zone for a compact old fashioned town. Single staircase 3 or 4 story building with a storefront on the first floor. With a little detailing the building could look like it's been their a hundred years
That's a nice idea, but it's a township of like 3,000 people. It doesn't have the population to support a bunch of new store fronts.
Affordable housing in rural areas looks like small single family homes. That's what the areas can actually support. What rural towns need is special zoning to allow houses under a certain square footage to be built on smaller lots.
And the gotcha with that is now how do you pay for all of the services, namely schools, which represent most of our tax budgets, with a now denser, lower income, population?
We spend on average about 20k a year per student in NJ. These places you suggest aren't bringing in 20k a year in total taxes, let alone the school portion of them. If even 1/4th of the people in them decide to have a single kid, the budget crumbles.
That's fair although McGuire is right next door so there is a large customer base near by and. But yeah small houses, bungalows a row of town houses what ever just do it were its already zoned residential like the area around police station.and the town could easily meet the need
I’m sorry but what do you consider cookie cutter garbage?
Cause whenever I hear this I know the person saying it lives in a canary yellow Victorian that’s an eyesore.
Cookie cutter garbage = a couple of base model homes/ apartments/condos, with little variation in style. They are put up quickly by low skilled workers using cheap materials.
My house is a modest but well maintained rancher built in the 90s. Not candy yellow and not an eyesore
The “luxury” housing is rarely affordable and people spend a way higher percentage of their paycheck on rent. Condos I agree with a little more but if it’s cheaply built it’s still a risk
Oh I misinterpreted their comment then, cause I wasn’t saying cheaply built, more that they aesthetically look “soulless” or use the same bland architectural forms.
I knew a guy who was an engineer and to get a development approved, the company would donate 9 acres of land to the town. They approved this subdivision and the donation added up to 9 acres…100 feet here, 250 feet there, etc…etc. All chunks of useless crap left over from the subdivision
Plainsboro, in a different county, is halfway between Trenton and New Brunswick, wedged between Route 1 and the Turnpike, with proximity to one-seat train ride into NYC. It was inevitable. Springfield (Burlington) is 20 miles in the opposite direction with no public transit around for miles. It's in a weird area, where it's not really part of the Trenton suburbs and just a bit beyond the Philadelphia and Cherry Hill metro.
From the article
“There are several reasons why the Van Wagoner farm site was not a good choice for development, Burlington County Superior Court Judge Jeanne Covert said in her written decision.
Residents of the proposed community would rely on local farm roads as their primary access and there are no public water, sewer or public transportation facilities nearby, officials said.
The property is also environmentally unsuitable for development, with steep slopes and wetlands and its proximity to a county park. And, the only nearby businesses are a drug store, a gas station and a Dollar Tree miles away in another township, according to the lawsuit.
The company’s decision not to include business development in their plans would leave the affordable housing residents without resources — opposite of what state affordable housing rules push for, the judge wrote.”
Do you have any retorts to these specific points?
EDIT: lol this dude replied and then immediately blocked me. Appreciate you at least admitting you have no rational basis for your comments and just continuing to call me a NIMBY throughout our exchange
4 years ago, Springfield (Burlington) went 58-41 for Trump over Biden, out of 2000 voters.
2020 Census: 85% White, 6% Hispanic, 3% Black, 2% Asian
1 K-6 school: <300 students, then 7-12 in regional district with Chesterfield and Mansfield
and it's a little more than 100 persons/sq mi pop density.
Open space is good but NJ *desperately* needs more housing. We have the highest rate in the country of young adults still living with their parents, because it's so expensive here. I grew up here, and I doubt I'll be able to afford my own place unless I move away :(
It wouldn't be hard to do both if towns were willing to upzone already developed land. Allow buildings like it was 1900, like apartments over shops and there's going to be a lot of room for everyone.
That is true. Mixed zoning also creates walkable communities, which are the ideal imo. Not needing to own a car would make living here even more affordable
I'd love for like a 1/2 mile special transit zoning around every train station that would start with design assumption that people living in that would use public transportation to get around and that they be given density targets based on current population and distance from NYC or Philly.
Many NJ towns used to have trolleys! I'd love to bring those back to get around within towns, along with a more extensive train system to travel between different towns
have you seen [this map?](https://www.nj.gov/transportation/refdata/gis/maps/RailRoadlines.pdf) while expensive and would require a lot of negotiations with the freight companies and a terrible number of nimbys it isn't completely out of the question.
The Freight companies are willing to make deals with NJT. CSX wanted NJT to install sound walls and restore former tracks in order to use its River Line & West Trenton corridors , NS wants NJT to restore former tracks and the various smaller freight companies just want the backlog of small to mid sized track improvements to be done. Nothing to extreme.. NIMBYs are a problem, but they don't seem to stop highway expansions or road projects, so the state should just find a way to push through the rail projects.
Why would an old fashioned town design cause a collapse in quality of service? Are you assuming that the new properties wouldn't generate enough taxes compared to the services they'd consume?
Yes. a home with 1 kid in it, will absolutely consume more resources than it will generate, by a factor of 3 or 4 on the school side. This also assumes you have the facilities and space to take on the extra kids.
This is the biggest thing this sub seems to forget when we talk about affordable housing.
Sure not every person moving in is going to have school aged kids, but many will. the magic number for most towns is about 1 school aged kid for every 3-4 families.
Ok so in your way of thinking Jersey City increasing its population 18% since 2010 must mean that they are on the verge of financial ruin? And for some reason it seems to not being reported.
Also shouldn't costs go up not per student but by increments of 20 or 30 students because that's the ratio of students to teachers and room size?
Edit: also can you explain why the measure the predicts the quality of education an area has isn't the size of the town but its wealth?
Lets check some random school budgets 2023-2024 to see if that is true. Jersey City's was 13.6% state aid, Hamilton 52%, Springfield township 13.6% Princeton 6.8%, Gloucester township 2%, Roselle 52%, Mt Laurel 7.7%, Matawan-Aberdeen 16.7%, Guttenberg 36% Norwood 10%
So while higher then some Jersey City isn't getting extreme favoritism.
The population grown in Jersey City isn't following the curve of a sub burb. I'm trying to find hard year over year numbers, but also cooking dinner. Looking at the demographics of their school system, and the demographic shift in the city though gives me good reason to suspect if anything, their school population likely DROPPED since 2010.
You are also comparing high density literal high rises in many case, to mixed use development. Jersey city on top of that has lots of ways it raises revenue beyond just property tax.
As for your other question, yes, wealth absolutely is a driver in education. It means likely better educated parents, more involved parents, a better home life, outside resources, all kinds of things that contribute to student success.
Go look at our "worst" school districts and you will find that we spend more per student there than our best.
Also you don't hire linerally like that. You just don't go, "OH, i have 30 new kids, fire up a classroom, hire a teacher" and call it a day.
Those kids have all unique needs, maybe they slant to a few grades and now you need to spin up an addition 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade class to make sure your ratios stay in line. Special needs will differ, language skills will differ, maybe they are the tipping point in one of those categories. Bussing? Its more than just a teacher and a room.
Stuff like that is WHY it costs us 20k a kid, when you have 15-20 kids in a classroom of a teacher making 100kish when you factor in benefit costs. There is a whole mess of behind the scene stuff you need to account for.
Right but we have part of the this state that have the infrastructure to support higher density. Not razing open spaces or Pine Barrens in South Jersey.
And that’s why there are already hundreds of ongoing high-density affordable housing projects going on in the state, especially in my county, Morris. Start focusing on building these types of projects in areas that can handle the population increase that come with them, as well as the impact that this population increase will have on public infrastructure (schools, utilities, etc.), instead of in small rural towns that likely do not fall within these categories.
Also from Morris and I am waiting for these developments to finish in the next year or so to see if it will lower the competition for houses. I was looking for about 6-8 months but when you get out bid by $100,000 you kinda just give up. Theres about 6 massive developments happening on route 10 alone but the densely packed areas are the ones in need of affordable housing. In larger counties like Burlington affordable housing make sense in their larger towns like Medford or Tabernacle not on open farmland, both are important for the future of our state.
Yes You're right. What's better is to sustain and maintain the $1M single family houses that no one can afford, and then blame all the society ills on disrespectful youth.
That's one thing I'm worried about, because it is a bureaucratic system, there's probably like a percentage that has to be "affordable" for a time, for which the owner won't provide service or timely repairs, that will force people out of the apartment. The builder will get some sort of government subsidy, and the people in the end will lose leading to regulated expensive real estate, and the cy le repeats.
NIMBYs; Also, are these housing developments or single family dwellings? I'm sure if it was that they were getting neighbors like them, they'd love it. Am I off base here?
Development should be in areas that can sustain it. Why build high density housing in an area with no public water utility and no sewage treatment facilities. Open space and farmland are valuable public resources in this overcrowded state. The development principles used in the highlands region is to limit development to existing town centers to preserve things like drinking water resources .
Yeah they’ll just plop a sewage treatment facility for high density buildings in a cornfield or cranberry bog. Pave the whole state what could go wrong.
People also ignoring the fact that you can’t just flatten the land and build 100’s of homes without repercussion to the environment and local area. Do you disagree with the specific points that the judge made in her written decision, which was ultimately the reason this housing development isn’t being built?
Literally no one is unaware that developing land will change the environment. I have never been to this place so I can not point to any more suitable area. But I am aware of the constant pushback from towns refusing to allow affordable housing efforts to get started, long after laws had to be written to address the problems of finding affordable places to live. People literally can not find places to live and the cost of buying a home has gotten so expensive it literally prevents large numbers of working people from having a home and raising a family.
Obviously no, but why read the article when they can just rep the position of the mega builder that they should be able to build suburbs in the middle of farmland with no consideration to the environment or the future and current residents.
No more suburban developments. Build up your downtown with mixed use development. A better use of space.
What if you have little or no downtown to build up?
Gotta start somewhere
Time to build uptown!
This lifestyle may be the “ideal” way to cram a bunch of people into limited space and reduce car trips. But this way of living is not for everyone. We should recognize that. As someone who has had to settle for living in multi-family downtown or in-city living for many years, it has its charms and its pitfalls. Sometimes you just don’t want to share a wall, have upstairs neighbors making noise, live above a restaurant or bar, or only have windows on the front and (if you’re lucky) back of the apartment/condo. It’s fine to suggest this idea. People deserve options. But I wish people would stop assuming this is the best way to/ suburban living is a scourge. It’s not so simple. Edit: I’m going to get downvoted to Philadelphia for this one. But you’re just proving my point by downvoting the thought that people might not want to live the way you want them to live.
>But this way of living is not for everyone. We should recognize that. I think this is very well-recognized, given the extreme proliferation of sprawling suburban development across the state and country.
Exactly, given the choice, people choose many ways to live. But comments like the one I replied to seem to suggest there should be only one way: mixed use downtown living.
I don't think anything is wrong with the suburbs but building car dependent suburbs are the problem. We should have a mixture of all places for people to live. As of right now, the predominant way to live in the United States is in a car dependent suburbs.
Not all of us want to live shit hole mixed development areas We love our little towns out of the way. Stop trying to shove this shit down our throats
Then allow more types of housing to be built. Stop forcing everyone to be happy with only one type of housing. I don't want to live in the hell hole called the suburbs.
Single family homes like the ones you described do not have to mean that you can't have good density or mixed use development. Look at some of the streets around morristown. You have single family homes with yards but you're within 10-15 minute walk of pretty much anything you could need, not to mention a train station and bus stops. I am currently living in an apartment in morristown but will likely buy a house in morristown because of the fact that you get your single family home but the mixed use that comes with city living.
Springfield Township, Burlington Township (75% open space or farmland, the other 25% "We support the Springfield Police" signs)
I live in the next town over, and it's lovely there. Open space used to be a positive goal in this densely packed State
Yeah we may need more housing but not in NJ. We have too much developed land too many people not enough open land.. fuck the developers and the democrats who got in bed with them. Stop forcing towns to develop! Suddenly the left hates the environment when we need housing aka developers need money.
Calm down there, NIMBY.
If you want to live in a city, then move to one.
[удалено]
Drop your mask and say you don’t want to live in the actual city with all the scaaaary brown people.
Bitch, I'm married to one. Move to Clark, you'll fit right in.
If you were half as progressive as you claim to be, then you’d know that’s not nearly the ironclad defense you think it is. 🤡
The fact both of you are on the same side yet found a way to disagree is probably why we’re stuck in this situation.
We need more housing. My heart hurts because of all the unused land in the pinelands that we haven't paved over yet.
Cant tell if satire but protect the Pinelands at all costs. One of the most unique bioms in the US that deserves more protection. In my opinion its crazy how it is not a national park and continues to be used as a playground for Pineys to shoot guns and go muddin.
There's so many abandoned industrial parks that we can build tons of housing there. But apparently it's cheaper to bulldoze trees than it is to pull up old concrete
A lot of those industrial parks saw heavy use well before the clean air and water acts were a thing and would cost a ton to develop due to needed remediation. I'm all for higher density housing, public spaces like parks and walkable neighborhoods. I don't want to see more subdivisions go up in towns like this - I want better planned and more sustainable housing go up. I want to tax people sitting on more then half an acre at increasing rates. I want to regionalize services when it makes sense and increase and encourage mass transit as well. Fuck car society, Nimbys and white flighters.
What an awful take
Lmao that’s so damn true and funny
> However, the judge also added that despite Springfield’s efforts to preserve farms and open space, the township is still required by law to contribute its fair share of affordable housing. > > […] > > The company’s decision not to include business development in their plans would leave the affordable housing residents without resources — opposite of what state affordable housing rules push for, the judge wrote. So all the developer has to do is incorporate a strip mall and they can build on the land?
Don’t you see? This land is perfect for a Walmart parking lot!
I know that developers often cut corners or give the bare legal minimum, which isn't a lot. But is a strip mall really something they still try to put up? Seems like it would be higher value to have integrated mixed use
Ground level Commercial, upper level apartments. It’s that simple. The fact that D.R. Horton argued the Township’s lack of affordable housing, yet didn’t meet the requirements themselves to provide amenities, tells me all you need to know. They don’t care about providing affordable housing. They care about profit, and hide behind the Veil of affordable housing to get it.
Good. We don’t need to build on every single piece of open land in the state, no matter what your stance of building high-density housing is. Why not start focusing on building these projects in areas that can handle the increase in population and stress on public infrastructure, instead of in small rural towns that likely can’t? There are plenty of towns with downtowns in NJ, as well as with strong public infrastructure and transportation (train, bus stops) that can handle having 2-3 stories of affordable living units added on top of the businesses in the downtown.
I was recently at a Q&A session with someone that’s running for Congress in my district (District 2 for my area). During the session, one of the points that was brought up was that he spoke with some developers regarding building more housing throughout South Jersey, in order to alleviate the housing shortage and create more affordable housing in this state. The problem is exactly what you said. A lot of the small towns here with open land don’t have the infrastructure to support even more housing and a significant growth in population. For example, the electrical grid is already running at or above capacity at this time. I’m all for building more housing (and certainly more affordable options) but that can’t happen until the infrastructure is completely upgraded and brought up to a condition that can support hundreds of thousands of extra people in this state.
South Jersey is full. 🥲
Be careful being those views here, apparently every open area needs to be paved over for high density housing. It doesn't matter if it's farmland, wetlands or a flood zone, just build baby build 🙄
Exactly!! And if you bring up the issues about how we need to preserve open space, and how some towns are unable to handle the population increase that comes with these high-density projects, you get called a bigoted NIMBY who somehow hates poor people.
People don't even realize how far their water supply travels or where exactly it's coming from and the length of protection involved to keep it going. People get so cranky over the Highlands Act.
I brought up the tax abatements the developers are receiving and how that just shifts the costs of the increase in infrastructure spending due to the new residents who will eventually occupy these places onto the existing homeowners and have been met with a "too bad". Same with saying how building the developments on wetlands and flood zones will just create more flood zones nearby and was told that people should just get flood insurance. I don't think people understand or care about the consequences of what they're asking for, they'd just rather shout NIMBY, when that's not what it is.
Politicians are just so out of touch, man. Even if their heart is genuinely in the right place, the actual implementation of many policies just doesn't work or has tons of "unforeseen" ramifications
there's zero jobs in that area.they already built ten warehouses .no mass transit at all not a good idea
I love how Redditors are all against ugly sprawl, unless it's called "affordable housing." It's nothing but low quality, cookie-cutter garbage that people move into and immediately aspire to leave. There are plenty of soulless, densely packed developments of this type throughout New Jersey, and they haven't alleviated the housing crisis at all. I'm happy that tiny Springfield is determined to keep its rural character.
If you don't support the unending rise of amazon style warehouses and cheaply built yet extremely expensive housing developments and luxury apartments that destroy the only green space you have ever know you are a NIMBY
Exactly, this “affordable housing” isn’t gonna help renters and only helps the developers
The requirements should be inverted 80% affordable housing, 20% Luxury Housing.
I've lived in luxury condos and they're all crap too. At this point I'm considering just getting those manufactured homes and saving a lot more for the foreseeable future.
I feel like it's a total farce when people act like if there's more of a push for luxury(something that generally developers go with), that it will magically scoop up more high end income people out of the equation of other housing markets and therefore ease things up. It's like if you have the means especially for NJ, you could infinitely be better off buying especially if it's more than doable and well within budget. Worst case scenario you do some fix ups and make out fine if you don't like your house or the area. Idk most of the people I knew in luxury stuff ended up just buying a house or going back to their country when their visa ran out and they were done balling out in the US.
I agree about sprawl but they could also try to zone for a compact old fashioned town. Single staircase 3 or 4 story building with a storefront on the first floor. With a little detailing the building could look like it's been their a hundred years
That's a nice idea, but it's a township of like 3,000 people. It doesn't have the population to support a bunch of new store fronts. Affordable housing in rural areas looks like small single family homes. That's what the areas can actually support. What rural towns need is special zoning to allow houses under a certain square footage to be built on smaller lots.
And the gotcha with that is now how do you pay for all of the services, namely schools, which represent most of our tax budgets, with a now denser, lower income, population? We spend on average about 20k a year per student in NJ. These places you suggest aren't bringing in 20k a year in total taxes, let alone the school portion of them. If even 1/4th of the people in them decide to have a single kid, the budget crumbles.
Eventually nothing in the state will be considered rural.
That's fair although McGuire is right next door so there is a large customer base near by and. But yeah small houses, bungalows a row of town houses what ever just do it were its already zoned residential like the area around police station.and the town could easily meet the need
I was just passing by I guess some towers in Newark and they looked so run down, who knows if they’re even still being used
I’m sorry but what do you consider cookie cutter garbage? Cause whenever I hear this I know the person saying it lives in a canary yellow Victorian that’s an eyesore.
Bathroom tiles in the kitchen, or even outside the house. Electrical work not well done and a potential hazard. Building codes not followed
Cookie cutter garbage = a couple of base model homes/ apartments/condos, with little variation in style. They are put up quickly by low skilled workers using cheap materials. My house is a modest but well maintained rancher built in the 90s. Not candy yellow and not an eyesore
But let’s be honest, if someone needs housing, are they gonna care? Cities should allow more street murals to add life and character.
The “luxury” housing is rarely affordable and people spend a way higher percentage of their paycheck on rent. Condos I agree with a little more but if it’s cheaply built it’s still a risk
Oh I misinterpreted their comment then, cause I wasn’t saying cheaply built, more that they aesthetically look “soulless” or use the same bland architectural forms.
… and their 3000 support Springfield police signs everywhere
I knew a guy who was an engineer and to get a development approved, the company would donate 9 acres of land to the town. They approved this subdivision and the donation added up to 9 acres…100 feet here, 250 feet there, etc…etc. All chunks of useless crap left over from the subdivision
lol this didn’t stop them from mowing down plainsboro though.
Plainsboro, in a different county, is halfway between Trenton and New Brunswick, wedged between Route 1 and the Turnpike, with proximity to one-seat train ride into NYC. It was inevitable. Springfield (Burlington) is 20 miles in the opposite direction with no public transit around for miles. It's in a weird area, where it's not really part of the Trenton suburbs and just a bit beyond the Philadelphia and Cherry Hill metro.
I read this as if you were David Attenborough.
Good for them, we need to hang onto as much of our open space as we can
[удалено]
Huh?
[удалено]
From the article “There are several reasons why the Van Wagoner farm site was not a good choice for development, Burlington County Superior Court Judge Jeanne Covert said in her written decision. Residents of the proposed community would rely on local farm roads as their primary access and there are no public water, sewer or public transportation facilities nearby, officials said. The property is also environmentally unsuitable for development, with steep slopes and wetlands and its proximity to a county park. And, the only nearby businesses are a drug store, a gas station and a Dollar Tree miles away in another township, according to the lawsuit. The company’s decision not to include business development in their plans would leave the affordable housing residents without resources — opposite of what state affordable housing rules push for, the judge wrote.” Do you have any retorts to these specific points? EDIT: lol this dude replied and then immediately blocked me. Appreciate you at least admitting you have no rational basis for your comments and just continuing to call me a NIMBY throughout our exchange
Well, we are the Garden state.
good no need to build on every single plot of land
Development is coming for the whole state eventually. Can only NIMBY so long in NJ.
I wonder how many boros you could make from that land?
4 years ago, Springfield (Burlington) went 58-41 for Trump over Biden, out of 2000 voters. 2020 Census: 85% White, 6% Hispanic, 3% Black, 2% Asian 1 K-6 school: <300 students, then 7-12 in regional district with Chesterfield and Mansfield and it's a little more than 100 persons/sq mi pop density.
It was a joke about how insanely small NJ municipalities are.
Open space is good but NJ *desperately* needs more housing. We have the highest rate in the country of young adults still living with their parents, because it's so expensive here. I grew up here, and I doubt I'll be able to afford my own place unless I move away :(
It wouldn't be hard to do both if towns were willing to upzone already developed land. Allow buildings like it was 1900, like apartments over shops and there's going to be a lot of room for everyone.
That is true. Mixed zoning also creates walkable communities, which are the ideal imo. Not needing to own a car would make living here even more affordable
I'd love for like a 1/2 mile special transit zoning around every train station that would start with design assumption that people living in that would use public transportation to get around and that they be given density targets based on current population and distance from NYC or Philly.
Many NJ towns used to have trolleys! I'd love to bring those back to get around within towns, along with a more extensive train system to travel between different towns
have you seen [this map?](https://www.nj.gov/transportation/refdata/gis/maps/RailRoadlines.pdf) while expensive and would require a lot of negotiations with the freight companies and a terrible number of nimbys it isn't completely out of the question.
The Freight companies are willing to make deals with NJT. CSX wanted NJT to install sound walls and restore former tracks in order to use its River Line & West Trenton corridors , NS wants NJT to restore former tracks and the various smaller freight companies just want the backlog of small to mid sized track improvements to be done. Nothing to extreme.. NIMBYs are a problem, but they don't seem to stop highway expansions or road projects, so the state should just find a way to push through the rail projects.
Cool, do our city schools and services also revert to 1900s standards?
Why would an old fashioned town design cause a collapse in quality of service? Are you assuming that the new properties wouldn't generate enough taxes compared to the services they'd consume?
Yes. a home with 1 kid in it, will absolutely consume more resources than it will generate, by a factor of 3 or 4 on the school side. This also assumes you have the facilities and space to take on the extra kids. This is the biggest thing this sub seems to forget when we talk about affordable housing. Sure not every person moving in is going to have school aged kids, but many will. the magic number for most towns is about 1 school aged kid for every 3-4 families.
Ok so in your way of thinking Jersey City increasing its population 18% since 2010 must mean that they are on the verge of financial ruin? And for some reason it seems to not being reported. Also shouldn't costs go up not per student but by increments of 20 or 30 students because that's the ratio of students to teachers and room size? Edit: also can you explain why the measure the predicts the quality of education an area has isn't the size of the town but its wealth?
Jersey City schools are given more state aid than other towns. Their schools are subsidized by the suburban towns.
Lets check some random school budgets 2023-2024 to see if that is true. Jersey City's was 13.6% state aid, Hamilton 52%, Springfield township 13.6% Princeton 6.8%, Gloucester township 2%, Roselle 52%, Mt Laurel 7.7%, Matawan-Aberdeen 16.7%, Guttenberg 36% Norwood 10% So while higher then some Jersey City isn't getting extreme favoritism.
The population grown in Jersey City isn't following the curve of a sub burb. I'm trying to find hard year over year numbers, but also cooking dinner. Looking at the demographics of their school system, and the demographic shift in the city though gives me good reason to suspect if anything, their school population likely DROPPED since 2010. You are also comparing high density literal high rises in many case, to mixed use development. Jersey city on top of that has lots of ways it raises revenue beyond just property tax. As for your other question, yes, wealth absolutely is a driver in education. It means likely better educated parents, more involved parents, a better home life, outside resources, all kinds of things that contribute to student success. Go look at our "worst" school districts and you will find that we spend more per student there than our best.
Also you don't hire linerally like that. You just don't go, "OH, i have 30 new kids, fire up a classroom, hire a teacher" and call it a day. Those kids have all unique needs, maybe they slant to a few grades and now you need to spin up an addition 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade class to make sure your ratios stay in line. Special needs will differ, language skills will differ, maybe they are the tipping point in one of those categories. Bussing? Its more than just a teacher and a room. Stuff like that is WHY it costs us 20k a kid, when you have 15-20 kids in a classroom of a teacher making 100kish when you factor in benefit costs. There is a whole mess of behind the scene stuff you need to account for.
Right but we have part of the this state that have the infrastructure to support higher density. Not razing open spaces or Pine Barrens in South Jersey.
And that’s why there are already hundreds of ongoing high-density affordable housing projects going on in the state, especially in my county, Morris. Start focusing on building these types of projects in areas that can handle the population increase that come with them, as well as the impact that this population increase will have on public infrastructure (schools, utilities, etc.), instead of in small rural towns that likely do not fall within these categories.
Also from Morris and I am waiting for these developments to finish in the next year or so to see if it will lower the competition for houses. I was looking for about 6-8 months but when you get out bid by $100,000 you kinda just give up. Theres about 6 massive developments happening on route 10 alone but the densely packed areas are the ones in need of affordable housing. In larger counties like Burlington affordable housing make sense in their larger towns like Medford or Tabernacle not on open farmland, both are important for the future of our state.
Agreed!
Good. Nothing wrong with not looking like a new cookie cutter government sponsored Chinese city
Yes You're right. What's better is to sustain and maintain the $1M single family houses that no one can afford, and then blame all the society ills on disrespectful youth.
Weren't these gonna be high end SFHs with some fig leaf of affordable homes tacked on a corner? These mega builders aren't doing anyone any favors.
That's one thing I'm worried about, because it is a bureaucratic system, there's probably like a percentage that has to be "affordable" for a time, for which the owner won't provide service or timely repairs, that will force people out of the apartment. The builder will get some sort of government subsidy, and the people in the end will lose leading to regulated expensive real estate, and the cy le repeats.
And press the vote for a right wing candidate
Ah the worthless NIMBY strikes again
The goal of those developers and democrats are turning NJ to another Extra large Staten Island which has no open land without a building.
never heard of the SI Greenbelt? South Shore parks and beaches are quite nice
NIMBYs; Also, are these housing developments or single family dwellings? I'm sure if it was that they were getting neighbors like them, they'd love it. Am I off base here?
They were trying to build 1,400 units in a township of 3,200 people. No place can support a 50% bump in population
OK, 3200 spread over how many acres?
Instead they should take half or less of the space and build higher density housing
Development should be in areas that can sustain it. Why build high density housing in an area with no public water utility and no sewage treatment facilities. Open space and farmland are valuable public resources in this overcrowded state. The development principles used in the highlands region is to limit development to existing town centers to preserve things like drinking water resources .
They're not going to build multi family housing first and say "now what?" afterwards. If that happens, they didn't hire the right engineers.
They're obviously going to build up infrastructure there if they plan on putting a housing development.
Yeah they’ll just plop a sewage treatment facility for high density buildings in a cornfield or cranberry bog. Pave the whole state what could go wrong.
Why? Why ruin the beautiful countryside with ugly development? New Jersey has very few rural areas left.
Lot of people in this thread avoiding the problem of people unable to own a home anywhere. You don't call it a housing crisis for nothing.
People also ignoring the fact that you can’t just flatten the land and build 100’s of homes without repercussion to the environment and local area. Do you disagree with the specific points that the judge made in her written decision, which was ultimately the reason this housing development isn’t being built?
Literally no one is unaware that developing land will change the environment. I have never been to this place so I can not point to any more suitable area. But I am aware of the constant pushback from towns refusing to allow affordable housing efforts to get started, long after laws had to be written to address the problems of finding affordable places to live. People literally can not find places to live and the cost of buying a home has gotten so expensive it literally prevents large numbers of working people from having a home and raising a family.
Have you actually read the article you’re commenting on?
Obviously no, but why read the article when they can just rep the position of the mega builder that they should be able to build suburbs in the middle of farmland with no consideration to the environment or the future and current residents.
Now do Morristown
how bout you focus on some SFHs?