Monday, Jan 27 - Town Council to Adopt Affordable Housing Obligation

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According to the West Windsor Town Council business meeting agenda, this Monday, Jan 27th at 7pm, there will be a vote on the town's eagerly awaited affordable housing obligation. The Council will adopt a resolution that states the town’s affordable housing obligation for 2025 through 2035 will be 392 units.

The 392 unit number is significantly lower than the 661 unit number calculated by the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) posted on October 18, 2024.

According to the Fair Housing Act, the township must pass a binding resolution that is registered with the DCA by Jan 31, 2025.

Interested parties can challenge the town’s number by February 28, 2025. The guidelines for implementing the Affordable Housing Alternate Dispute Resolution Program say that the challengers “must state with particularity how the municipal calculation fails to comply”  with the law. “The challenge must also include the challenger's own calculation” of the affordable housing number.

In the report prepared by Burgis Associates for the town, Burgis used the DCA’s calculation and corrected the data used by the DCA to account for “such issues as sites being incorrectly identified as vacant when in fact they are developed; preserved open space properties or sites otherwise encumbered that are mistakenly identified as being available for development," among other reasons. Burgis’s report calculated the affordable housing obligation as 392 units.

The business meeting is open to the public and includes a 30 minute Public Comment period near the beginning of the meeting and a 15 minute Public Comment period towards the end of the meeting.  If you would like to address the Council on this issue, you must speak in the first Public Comment period.

The agenda for the meeting that includes the ‘Present and Prospective Needs Analysis’ report by Burgis Associates is posted (page 38) on the town’s website.