Front Page: New Jersey; No. 233; The Battle Over Mt. Laurel

<v Michael Aaron>Welcome to a special edition of Front Page, New Jersey. <v Michael Aaron>I'm Michael Aaron. The Mount Laurel housing issue was one of the most complicated we have <v Michael Aaron>in New Jersey and one of the most interesting on this program in the space of half an <v Michael Aaron>hour. We're going to try to lay it out for you. <v Michael Aaron>We'll show you how it began. What's at stake? <v Michael Aaron>We'll visit a town where it's already very far along. <v Michael Aaron>And along the way we'll hear from some people who are pretty passionate about the whole <v Michael Aaron>thing. So here it is. <v Michael Aaron>The battle over Mt. Laurel. <v Speaker>You will see that the plaintiffs are asking this court to devise a remedy <v Speaker>for over well over 50 percent. <v Speaker>As far reaching the Mt. Laurel Decision appears to be. <v Speaker>Middletown 88 hundred than I have in stock. <v Speaker>[voices talk over one another] <v Speaker>Cranbury, an historic village in the center of New Jersey, surrounded by farmland.

<v Speaker>At present, there are 750 homes here under the Supreme Court's Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel 2 ruling. There could be 4000 more by 1990. <v Betty Wagner>This is mind boggling. Little town like this with only seven hundred and fifty <v Betty Wagner>houses suddenly being increased to over 4000 units. <v Alan Danser>The impact on the farmland and the historic district, and <v Alan Danser>the municipal government and the school system would be tremendous. <v William Moran>In addition to that, we have the cost of expanding the sewer system. <v William Moran>The cost of expanding the water system and the cost of providing the additional <v William Moran>infrastructure. <v Speaker>Four developers are suing Cranbury for the right to build all those houses on the <v Speaker>farmland outside town. <v Speaker>A few farmers want it to happen. <v Speaker>They could get rich from selling their land. <v Edward "Buss" Simonson>Cranbury is a historic area. They want to keep Cranbury just like it's been in the last <v Edward "Buss" Simonson>50 years. They didn't want anything to come into Cranbury, whether it's the rateable or <v Edward "Buss" Simonson>whether it's housing or period, if they want it to come in.

<v Betty Wagner>I think that it's important not to destroy something that's been built <v Betty Wagner>up over the years. Our streetscapes are unbelievably <v Betty Wagner>compatible with our village, and when we were made a national historic <v Betty Wagner>district, it was stated that we are the best preserved 19th century community <v Betty Wagner>in Middlesex County. <v Speaker>What's happening in Cranbury is happening more or less in 87 towns in New Jersey. <v Speaker>They've been sued by developers and face court ordered housing construction. <v Speaker>Forty three hundred new units in Denville, for example. <v Speaker>Fifty eight hundred in Paramus, eleven thousand in Holmdel, thirty three <v Speaker>hundred and Moorestown. Some towns have given in and settled their cases <v Speaker>in others. There's defiance in the air. <v Speaker>This decision is ?inaudible? <v Speaker>We should fight it by doing absolutely nothing and let the supreme court challenge us. <v Speaker>Mount Laurel to a solution for the greedy, not for the needy. <v Peter Garibaldi>I'll go to jail before I'll surrender my town, to, to the courts,

<v Peter Garibaldi>to the judges, to the land moguls and whoever else <v Peter Garibaldi>is attempting to jam this down the throats of the people. <v Ray Bateman>Branchburg is ill equipped to handle what it what has been said. <v Ray Bateman>We have to immediately handle and it's going to be just chaos. <v Speaker>I believe we must act to restore some semblance of order and reason to the current <v Speaker>proceedings. Judges should not be in the position of determining how much <v Speaker>housing is needed, where it should go. <v Michael Aaron>How did we get to this point? Well, it began here in Mount Laurel Township 15 <v Michael Aaron>years ago. Now, Laurel is a sprawling, semi-rural area about 12 miles <v Michael Aaron>from Philadelphia. It was mostly farmland until the 1960s when developers <v Michael Aaron>began to suburbanized the place. <v Speaker>Ethel Lawrence has lived in Mount Laurel all her life. <v Ethel Lawrence>Every time a developer bought a piece of land, somebody was <v Ethel Lawrence>displaced. So therefore, you know, there just wasn't any affordable housing.

<v Ethel Lawrence>And of course, the value went up and up and up. <v Speaker>Mrs. Lawrence was part of a group of Mount Laurel residents that wanted to build housing <v Speaker>they could afford for themselves, for their children. <v Speaker>Mrs. Lawrence has nine children. <v Speaker>The problem was zoning. Traditionally, suburbs are zoned like this one <v Speaker>single family house per acre or half acre. <v Speaker>Many people, however, can only afford housing like this. <v Speaker>Multi-family housing, seven or eight units to the acre. <v Speaker>Carl Bisgaier was fresh out of law school and working in a legal services office in <v Speaker>Camden. <v Speaker>When Mrs. Lawrence's group approached him, there was a <v Speaker>lower income minority community whose roots in Mount Laurel <v Speaker>went back well over 100 years, <v Speaker>who were attempting to provide lower some new lower income housing for themselves. <v Speaker>They were looking for about 30 or 40 units and they were <v Speaker>told by the municipality that that wouldn't be possible.

<v Speaker>At the same time, the township was approving 10000 units <v Speaker>of middle and upper income housing. <v Speaker>In 1971, Bisgaier's Office sued Mount Laurel on behalf of Mrs. Lawrence <v Speaker>the NAACP and others. <v Speaker>We didn't ask Mt. Laurel to build low income housing. <v Speaker>We only asked them to relax the zoning laws they're planning <v Speaker>to allow us the opportunity to build. <v Speaker>The case went to the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1975. <v Speaker>The court did what no other court in the nation had done. <v Speaker>It ruled that restrictive zoning of the sort practiced in Mount Laurel, discriminated <v Speaker>against the poor and thereby violated the state constitution. <v Speaker>Zoning, said the court, is a power delegated to municipalities by the state <v Speaker>and must be used to promote the general welfare, not just the welfare of town residents. <v Speaker>Between 1975 and 1980, the legislature did nothing to help implement <v Speaker>them out. Laurell doctrine. Gov. Brendan Byrne ordered studies of it. <v Speaker>Meanwhile, developers would sue municipalities for the right to build multi-family

<v Speaker>housing under this new doctrine, and the towns would appeal and appeal and appeal. <v Speaker>Six of those appeals came before the High Court again in 1980. <v Speaker>An unprecedented four days of oral argument, followed by two years of deliberation, <v Speaker>led to a unanimous 248 page decision written by Chief Justice Robert <v Speaker>Wilentz. <v Speaker>This court is more firmly committed to the Mount Laurel Doctrine than ever, and we <v Speaker>are determined to make it work. <v Speaker>Mount Laurel 2 said that every town in the growth areas of New Jersey, as designated by <v Speaker>a state government planning map, must take affirmative steps to provide its fair <v Speaker>share of the low and moderate income housing need in its region of the state <v Speaker>to stimulate that and to pay for it. <v Speaker>The court recommended something called the Builders Remedy. <v Speaker>Any builder who successfully challenged the town's zoning ordinance would be entitled to <v Speaker>build for regular housing units for every low cost unit he provided. <v Speaker>The profit from the four would help subsidize the low price of the one. <v Speaker>It's the builders remedy that threatens Cranbury and the other towns with so many new

<v Speaker>homes. <v Speaker>Now, the issue that you're raising in that regard is will this result in the <v Speaker>overpopulation of various misspelt is tremendous unplanned growth <v Speaker>and the resulting devastation of our suburban and rural enclaves <v Speaker>of the middle and upper class. <v Speaker>I think that there is virtually no reasonable concern that anybody <v Speaker>should have that that will happen this Geyer says. <v Speaker>The court took great care in Mount Laurel to to ensure that housing construction would be <v Speaker>well-planned and environmentally sound fiscal year. <v Speaker>Today, as a private attorney and a developer, one of the towns he's suing on behalf <v Speaker>of a client is Cranberry. <v Speaker>Cranberry, he says, is a growing town in a booming region. <v Speaker>The root one card or these are not rural agricultural communities <v Speaker>in the root one car. These are bustling, economically, developing <v Speaker>cadres of great employment in the state of New Jersey. <v Speaker>We've got some development out here now and there's so much need for help

<v Speaker>come moving into the township and there's no place for a lower income people <v Speaker>to live here. <v Speaker>It makes absolutely no sense from a planning point of view to have in the same place <v Speaker>a phenomenally growing industrial commercial Carter. <v Speaker>On the one hand and a rural enclave on the other. <v Speaker>It seems to me that that's a poor reason. <v Speaker>We're a poor excuse for destroying a valuable. <v Speaker>A natural asset and a valuable historical asset. <v Speaker>In a moment, the builders remedy inaction. <v Speaker>It's often said that the real beneficiaries of Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel are the lawyers, and this man is usually included in any such discussion. <v Speaker>He's Henry Hill of Princeton. <v Speaker>He sues towns on behalf of developers and he's been quite outspoken about how

<v Speaker>easy it is. <v Speaker>I once stated actually in a law review article that <v Speaker>municipalities who are faced with Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel litigation are not unlike baby harp seals <v Speaker>during the periodic Canadian massacres. <v Speaker>They can slither and they can squeal, but not for very long. <v Speaker>Al Ferguson, a Newark attorney, has defended a number of towns against Mount Laurel <v Speaker>suits, including one against Henry Hill. <v Speaker>For lawyers it was fun. You got to understand, we had great expert witnesses and they <v Speaker>disagreed. We tried cases. That's what lawyers get paid to do for the town. <v Speaker>It is a nightmare because the town doesn't know what to do. <v Speaker>The town says to us, what do we do to get rid of this town? <v Speaker>He said on more than one occasion, Ferguson, you're through. <v Speaker>As soon as we can get rid of you, you're out of a job. <v Speaker>And I say you're right. <v Speaker>Where Ferguson opposed Hill was Bedminster, a wealthy community of estates and horse <v Speaker>farms. Today, it's the only place in New Jersey where Mount Laurel housing actually

<v Speaker>exists as a result of a builder's remedy. <v Speaker>The only other Mount Laurel housing is a mobile home park in Mount Laurel itself. <v Speaker>Of the twelve hundred eighty seven homes here so far, 260 are set aside for <v Speaker>low and moderate income buyers. <v Speaker>It's called the Hills and it's the result of a 10 year court fight that got settled. <v Speaker>John Kerwin is the developer. <v Speaker>Well, we've invited a number of municipalities that are that are themselves trying to <v Speaker>plan for and accommodate that laurel to visit our community. <v Speaker>Many have done so. And I think they go back with a different view of network housing <v Speaker>can be done to be it will be made attractive and to be to be operated successfully. <v Speaker>The low income units sell for as little as twenty seven thousand dollars. <v Speaker>Virtually the same units sold to a moderate income buyer goes for forty eight thousand <v Speaker>dollars. Regular market price housing here ranges from eighty thousand dollars <v Speaker>on up to three hundred thousand. <v Carolann Auger>This is an old Chryste unit. It's a two bedroom with a walkout basement <v Carolann Auger>and it probably will sell anywhere from two twenty five to thirty five.

<v Carolann Auger>The Mount Laurel unit was built with the <v Carolann Auger>same type of insulation, the same type of basic <v Carolann Auger>construction that we're building all of our units at the Hill. <v Carolann Auger>The difference probably is one of size mostly. <v Speaker>To qualify for a low income unit, a family of three must have income below fifteen <v Speaker>thousand two hundred dollars for a moderate income unit below twenty four thousand <v Speaker>three hundred dollars. The catch, if it is one, is that in either bracket, one must <v Speaker>be able to secure a mortgage. <v Speaker>First item, as a down payment already of 10 percent. <v Speaker>She's a female head of household. She worked for 18 teachers from an urban area and she <v Speaker>just needs closing costs. <v Speaker>A nonprofit housing corporation runs the Mount Laurel program at the hills, as <v Speaker>one will in every town where Mount Laurel housing gets built. <v Speaker>On its board, two representatives from the town, two from the state public advocate's <v Speaker>office, and three representing Hill's management.

<v Speaker>Together, they make sure the program adheres to the terms of the court settlement. <v Speaker>Second applicant, has two children, 4 years old, 7 years old. <v Speaker>She has an income of 12,5 And makes some overtime. <v Speaker>Most of those people who are qualifying are applicants who live <v Speaker>within a 20 mile radius of the area, they're <v Speaker>generally single women who have children. <v Speaker>The first Mount Laurel occupants are just beginning to move in. <v Speaker>One we spoke to requested anonymity. <v Speaker>I think it's wonderful. It offers people a decent place to live. <v Speaker>Nobody really wants to live substandardly. <v Speaker>And a lot of people today are people who are hardworking, people who <v Speaker>could do better if they didn't have to spend everything they earn on rent. <v Speaker>This couple had selected their home and we're waiting for mortgage approval. <v David Bohannon>We like it. I like it. It saved us a lot of money. <v Noreen Beischer>We wouldn't be able to afford to live in this area. <v Noreen Beischer>Bedminister people sell their homes that are $250000 homes

<v Noreen Beischer>to move into a condominium just out of Bedminster address in this area. <v Speaker>Others have been disappointed. Veronica Aponte, for example, earns just a bit too <v Speaker>much for a low income unit, but was told she could get a moderate income unit for herself <v Speaker>and her two children. <v Speaker>And all I had to do was put in for a mortgage. <v Speaker>Well, that's where my problem came in. Unfortunately, they told me I didn't make enough <v Speaker>money to qualify for a mortgage. <v Speaker>They required me to have a down payment of twenty seven thousand dollars, <v Speaker>which is more than 50 percent of the total cost of housing. <v Speaker>You're in a situation where you have a fairly narrow window of opportunity. <v Speaker>On the one hand, you cannot earn over a certain amount of income by. <v Speaker>Various according to the household size, having passed that first qualifier, <v Speaker>you then, in making your application to the to the to the lenders, to the mortgage <v Speaker>companies, you've got to prove yourself in their mind to be credit worthy. <v Speaker>In Mt. Laurel to the court expressed the hope that as a result of its decision, the urban <v Speaker>poor would start moving out to suburbia.

<v Speaker>That's not happening here because of the mortgage requirements and because the trial <v Speaker>judge in this case gave priority to people already in the Bedminster area. <v Speaker>Maybe in another town and with rental housing instead of housing for sale, it could <v Speaker>happen at the same time. <v Speaker>It's not just the urban poor who need affordable housing. <v Speaker>It's also divorcées, retirees, young couples. <v Speaker>It's a good example of what happens when you open up a marketplace <v Speaker>where none has existed before. <v Speaker>Houses. There's a huge pent up demand for multi-family housing in the summer sandhills, <v Speaker>which no one has been able to need and tell the zoning and Bedminster <v Speaker>was broken through Mt. Laurel litigation. <v Speaker>Once all of Bedminster was zoned like this one house per every five acres. <v Speaker>Corporations moved into the area. <v Speaker>Only their top executives could afford to live nearby. <v Speaker>It was an example of the most atrocious form of of <v Speaker>exclusionary zoning. Here to flood.

<v Speaker>Try that. Nobody could live in Bedminster unless they bought 5 acres and lived <v Speaker>on a lot. That was no less than five acres. <v Speaker>After the town agreed to reason this site for multi-family housing, the value of the <v Speaker>land jumped from 5 million to $30 million. <v Speaker>A half interest in it was sold to an Arab investor for 15 million. <v Speaker>That profit ensures that the developer will not lose money on Mount Laurel units. <v Speaker>I think that if you want to encourage Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel Litigation as the Supreme Court does, you've got to reward the risk. <v Speaker>He took substantial risk. <v Speaker>I think that risk was rewarded. <v Speaker>That profit does not bother Al Furguson as much as the whole idea of a constitutional <v Speaker>right to housing. <v Speaker>Many, many lawyers and judges, though, say that we are getting into a very, very <v Speaker>troublesome area and it's a slippery slope. <v Speaker>If you have to have a fair share of housing units today aught one to <v Speaker>have a constitutional right to a fair share of whatever tomorrow, what? <v Speaker>For example, Chevrolet's if you have a fair share housing unit

<v Speaker>and you have a fair share job, do you have to have a fair share <v Speaker>Chevrolet to get from one to the other? <v Speaker>Meanwhile, at the hills, what did the neighbors think? <v Speaker>Whatever. I just see it as part of a balanced community. <v Speaker>As a matter of fact, my daughter's college roommate is moving into Village green, <v Speaker>which is part of the Mount Laurel to community here. <v Speaker>And we're just looking forward to having her as a neighbor. <v Speaker>And what do the people of Bedminster think? <v Speaker>I do not like it. I think a blot on the landscape. <v Speaker>I'm not thrilled about it. <v Speaker>I wonder what it's gonna look like in front of 15 or 20 years. <v Speaker>I feel marvelous about the hills and I really do. <v Speaker>I think it is a wonderful need for so many families and so many couples and so many <v Speaker>individuals. I think parts of it are very well done, but I think it's overdone. <v Speaker>I think there's too many units and I think in the long run that <v Speaker>it's going to not be a good thing for this area. <v Speaker>Do you think it's going to congest the area? <v Speaker>I don't think so. Definitely not. <v Speaker>Maybe it would bring in a great shopping mall.

<v Speaker>That's what I'm hoping for. <v Speaker>In a moment part 3 of the battle over Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel. <v Speaker>In Mount Laurel, to Chief Justice William S. <v Speaker>wrote, We act first and foremost because the Constitution requires <v Speaker>protection of the interests involved and because the legislature has not protected them. <v Speaker>We have always preferred legislative to judicial action in this field. <v Speaker>March 1985, After six months of drafting and redrafting, a <v Speaker>Mount Laurel bill sponsored by Democrats is up for a vote in the State Assembly. <v Speaker>I am sick of hearing this kind of chatter. <v Speaker>If there- if there's an amendment that is in fact constructive, it ought to be offered. <v Speaker>If not, we ought to vote. Mr. Speaker. It's time to house the poor.

<v Speaker>The bill would ease the impact of Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel by creating a state housing council to help towns fulfill their obligations. <v Speaker>And it would impose a one year freeze on all Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel cases presently in the courts. <v Speaker>But Republicans have problems with it. <v Speaker>Show me the bill where the state council will differ <v Speaker>from the courts in determining the low and moderate income <v Speaker>housing units. Show me. <v Speaker>I can't find them. <v Speaker>Show me in the bill where the courts will be removed from <v Speaker>the area of housing and zoning. <v Speaker>I can't find them. <v Speaker>Ralph luvvies, the only member of the assembly who himself is a builder, is leading the <v Speaker>Republican opposition to the bill. <v Speaker>While the debate is going on, Governor Kean in another part of the state house is hinting <v Speaker>to reporters that he will veto the bill. <v Gov. Tom Kean>The federal government couldn't even handle a housing program and has since backed out. <v Gov. Tom Kean>I think that the state is going to get into an affirmative action program to build <v Gov. Tom Kean>housing. We just uh, taxpayers just are not going to be able to afford that under the

<v Gov. Tom Kean>period of time. <v Speaker>Kean has vowed to ease the burden of Mt. Laurel, but this bill, which his office helped <v Speaker>draft, now appears to offer too little in the way of real relief. <v Speaker>Suburban Republicans are pressuring him to veto it. <v Speaker>Already in Monmouth County, ten thousand units approve, Albridge <v Speaker>95 hundred units. <v Speaker>Monroe twenty nine hundred units. <v Speaker>New Brunswick, fifty seven hundred units. <v Speaker>These winds are 7000 units. <v Speaker>Franklin 10000 units. <v Speaker>Cranbury, 4000 units. <v Speaker>Toms River, 20000 units. <v Speaker>Township six. 6000 units. <v Speaker>Middletown. Eighty eight hundred units. <v Speaker>And I haven't stopped. The Supreme Court started this snowball rolling down <v Speaker>the hill. It is getting huger and huger and they don't know how to stop it. <v Speaker>Despite Mr. Luvvies, the bill passes on a straight party line vote and goes <v Speaker>to the governor, who has until April 22nd to act upon it. <v Speaker>One week later, lawyers for the developers suing Cranbury are in court.

<v Speaker>One of them has filed for a builder's remedy. <v Speaker>He wants it now because he's afraid a legislative freeze will deprive him of it later. <v Speaker>We are entitled, in my view, based on the Supreme Court principle, <v Speaker>because there is no dispute to a builder's remedy. <v Speaker>And your honor. I'm entitled to it now. <v Speaker>Waiting a couple of weeks. And they severely in <v Speaker>alterably prejudice my client's position. <v Speaker>The other lawyers are here to jockey for position with the judge. <v Speaker>Three of them also want builder's remedies. <v Speaker>But the judge is in no hurry. <v Speaker>He seems to need to be rather strange, don't you think? <v Speaker>Could she move the Florida legislature? <v Speaker>Dennis Jensen, we can protect you from here <v Speaker>until the legislature and the governor act. <v Speaker>This is where the Mount Laurel issue will remain in the courts with three judges, <v Speaker>one for each region of the state making land use decisions for 87 municipalities. <v Speaker>It's not his business. She's not a housing expert.

<v Speaker>He said he's now an assignment judge in Ocean County. <v Speaker>Busy as busy as hell, frankly. <v Speaker>And when you get the court, a court, a better judge deciding what's best for Branch <v Speaker>Burke Township, which is one hundred miles away from his from his regin. <v Speaker>Based on things that their lawyers tell them in court, you're not going to get a good <v Speaker>solution, a thoughtful solution. <v Speaker>Jerry Rose is a professor at Rutgers who's been saying for years the court went way too <v Speaker>far in Mount Laurel and now says even with legislation, the game is basically <v Speaker>lost. <v Speaker>I'm uncomfortable about the fact that the legislation <v Speaker>is just a reiteration of the judicial decision. <v Speaker>In other words, the legislature has done very little to <v Speaker>provide its own legislative solution to the problem. <v Speaker>It has just adopted the judicial language and the judicial methodology <v Speaker>and the judicial techniques for resolving the issue.

<v Speaker>Believers in Mount Laurel share that view. <v Speaker>For the most part, the bill is an institutionalization of Mount Laurel. <v Speaker>Provides for for a Cannex within state government. <v Speaker>To implement the Mt. Laurel decision, Hill's problem with the bill is that it would <v Speaker>freeze all his Mount Laurel lawsuits. <v Speaker>I have never seen a bill before which orders the courts to <v Speaker>stop litigation in the process, and I would not be surprised as the courts <v Speaker>refuse to follow the moratorium. <v Speaker>After being close to the Mount Laurel issue for a while, you can't help but wonder is <v Speaker>this really what the Supreme Court had in mind? <v Speaker>Lawsuits galore, political ferment near revolt in a number of towns. <v Speaker>Some people say it is. They say the court knew that only an extreme judicial act like <v Speaker>Mount Laurel could have prodded the state into doing anything about the problem. <v Speaker>Others think the court would probably like to revise Mount Laurel to a group of <v Speaker>22 towns, for example, including Cranbury recently petitioned the court to

<v Speaker>do just that. <v Speaker>And for what it's worth, we think the court will welcome that opportunity. <v Speaker>The court itself is mum in declining our requests for interviews within the judicial <v Speaker>branch. Chief Justice Willens wrote The judicial thought process <v Speaker>must remain independent. <v Speaker>Second, the subject matter is highly controversial and right now very <v Speaker>much in the legislative arena. <v Speaker>The court also turned down the petition of the 22 towns, whatever the court <v Speaker>thinks. <v Speaker>The real question is, will New Jersey be somehow diminished if all this housing being <v Speaker>spoken about is actually built? <v Speaker>And it's not as if this housing is not going to be necessary. <v Speaker>It's not as if the court has made the housing necessary. <v Speaker>The housing is necessary because of the existence of the New Jersey economy and the <v Speaker>existence of the New Jersey growth in population. <v Speaker>The question hasn't been whether the housing is necessary. <v Speaker>The question has only been where it's going to be provided. <v Speaker>How many more households will be living in substandard conditions? <v Speaker>How many more households are going to be living in overcrowded conditions as opposed to

<v Speaker>providing safe, decent, sanitary housing for those people? <v Speaker>I suppose there's an image out there that developers are going to go out and build <v Speaker>thousands of houses in Cranbury in Princeton and that Finster <v Speaker>metro, which will sit there unoccupied as a blight on the land. <v Speaker>What should be clear to anyone who understands the building industry is <v Speaker>the builders don't build unless they has a market. <v Speaker>And to the extent that now low and the fair sharing <v Speaker>number is required by units, then there is a market for it. <v Speaker>Those units will not be built. <v Speaker>Do you think Mount Laurel too was a mistake? <v Speaker>I think it's an experiment. It's too early to tell in my mind whether it's a mistake or <v Speaker>not. It certainly is a noble experiment. <v Speaker>It really is a call to certainly the lawyers and judges <v Speaker>to try and make the legal system deliver something <v Speaker>which really hasn't delivered before.

<v Speaker>The Supreme Court is not going to back down from Mount Laurel two. <v Speaker>Legislation may shift the arena somewhat and lower some of the numbers, but it won't make <v Speaker>the issue go away. One way out would be for towns to find ways of putting up <v Speaker>low cost housing themselves without the 4 to 1 builders remedy. <v Speaker>Princeton Burrow is doing that and so is Bernardsville. <v Speaker>Of course, those are wealthy towns. <v Speaker>In other towns, it would take an infusion of federal money of which there isn't any or <v Speaker>state money which the governor has said we can't afford. <v Speaker>Without some form of government financing, all that's left is the builder's remedy, <v Speaker>and that means the battle over Mount Laurel will go on and on and on. <v Speaker>I'm Michael Aaron. This has been a special edition of FRONT PAGE, New Jersey. <v Speaker>Thanks for watching. <v Speaker>Little town like this, with only 750 houses suddenly <v Speaker>being increased to over 4000 units. <v Speaker>Returned to six thousand units.

<v Speaker>Middletown 88 hundred units, and I haven't stopped. <v Speaker>You wouldn't be able to afford to live in this area. <v Speaker>Bedminister people sell their homes that are $250000 homes <v Speaker>to move into a condominium just out of Bedminister addresses area. <v Speaker>I'll go to jail before I surrendered my town to the courts, to <v Speaker>the judges. We don't ask them ?inaudible?. <v Speaker>We only ask them to relax the zoning ?inaudible? <v Speaker>The municipalities are faced with ?inaudible? <v Speaker>Litigation are not unlike baby harp seals during the periodic canadian massacres. <v Speaker>?inaudible?, but not for very long. <v Speaker>Another is to have a bumper sticker, Mt. <v Speaker>Laurel too, a solution for the greedy, not for the needy. <v Speaker>If you have a fair share housing unit and you have a fair share job, <v Speaker>do you have to have a fair share of Chevrolet to get from one to the other?

<v Speaker>And it's not as if this housing is not going to be necessary. <v Speaker>It's not as if the court has made the housing necessary. <v Speaker>The housing is necessary because the existence of the New Jersey economy and the <v Speaker>existence of New Jersey growth in population. <v Speaker>If it is an amendment that is in fact constructive, it ought to be offered. <v Speaker>If not, we ought to vote. Mr Speaker, it's time to house the poor. <v Speaker>Thank you, Assemblywoman Walker. <v Speaker>Brought on Mr Bryant. <v Speaker>Brian, yields.