March 21, 2024

This Monday marked the passage of two influential bills in the New Jersey Legislature. New Jersey Future supported bill A4/S50, which encourages affordable housing development by helping towns understand their affordable housing obligation sooner and giving them more time to plan for and create new homes. This bill acknowledges the importance of the State Development and Redevelopment Plan and provides incentives for producing affordable housing near transit and on redevelopment sites. It lays the groundwork for the next ten years of affordable housing development and goes a long way toward making New Jersey more economically and racially integrated. 

The second noteworthy bill reauthorized the Transportation Trust Fund, ensuring at least $10 billion of investments over the next five years. While the bill maintained funding for local initiatives, it missed an opportunity to prioritize mobility over automobiles. We will be working with leaders in the Administration and Legislature to shift our transportation priorities toward active transportation options and infrastructure, reducing the amount of driving we all need to do, setting targets and tracking the number of vehicle miles we all travel, and making it easier to take public transit.

Last month also kicked off the budget season in New Jersey. While the budget is our premiere annual policy document for state government, articulating our priorities for Fiscal Year 2025, a recent Monmouth poll indicates that only 45% of New Jerseyans have even heard of the budget. 

Now that the Governor has presented his budget, it’s up to the Legislature to agree, disagree, and present counter-proposals. We will be monitoring and engaging in this process to ensure the budget effectively charts a course for funding the investments we know need to be made in order to secure a bright and equitable future for all New Jerseyans. We want to see significant funding for both water and transit infrastructure investment, along with funding for planning and technical assistance for the municipalities that participate in the planning, approval, and development of housing in NJ. We will be closely watching to see if the Governor’s proposed new Corporate Transit Fee designed to generate an anticipated $800 million for NJ Transit will remain intact or if an alternative will be proposed. 

Peter Kasabach

Executive Director

P.S.

We are currently accepting nominations for Smart Growth Awards and the Redevelopment Trailblazer Award through March 31, 2024. Find our submission guidelines and links to our nomination portal below. We want to honor great projects and people in New Jersey!

Transit Oriented Development is Smart Growth

Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is the key to developing dense, walkable town centers throughout New Jersey where residents can choose to live without a private automobile in favor of relying on public transportation. We published two blogs on the subject: first, “Transit-Oriented Development is Popular, but Won’t Happen by Itself,” shows that the population in the 153 TOD municipalities in NJ grew twice as fast as in other municipalities. Secondly, “NJDOT’s Safe Streets to Transit Program Is Improving Communities Across the State – Yours Can Be Next” provides examples of recently funded street safety infrastructure and points readers to information to prepare their town or municipality for the next round of funding.

The Regional Plan Association has released a new report, Homes on Track, which advances our efforts to promote transit-oriented development by chronicling the interaction between land use and transportation in our rail network, and estimates opportunity levels by location. This report reinforces the opportunities that exist to develop around our transit stations, as was first documented in our decade-old and still relevant report Targeting Transit: Assessing Development Opportunities Around New Jersey’s Transit Stations. Our Executive Director Peter Kasabach spoke to NJ PBS about the importance of TOD and how mixed-use development around transportation centers and along corridors can help us rely less on private automobiles.

Do you know of an innovative project, plan, or initiative that deserves to be honored for its commitment to smart growth principles? Consider nominating it for a 2024 Smart Growth Award! Each winning project will be featured in a professionally produced video, which will be shown during the in-person Smart Growth Awards Showcase event.

Smart Growth Award and Redevelopment Trailblazer Award nominations along with all supporting documents are accepted only via the online submission portal. Start your nomination after following the guidelines and nomination instructions. Submission deadline is March 31, 2024.

Legislative Updates

New Jersey Future supported bill A4/S50. This bill helps towns understand their affordable housing obligation, and give them more time to plan for and create new homes faster.

Bill S2292 requires e-bike riders to register with the Motor Vehicle Commission with multiple forms of insurance, creating an unjust paywall. Send this letter to your elected officials to join New Jersey Future in opposing this bill.

• March 28: Join New Jersey Future and the New Jersey Builders Association from 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m. for a free webinar on Understanding Stormwater Design and Review Under the Inland Flood Protection Rule. Register today!
• June 5-7: The 2024 NJ Planning and Redevelopment Conference hosted by New Jersey Future and APA New Jersey will be held virtually June 5–6 and June 7 in person at the Hyatt Regency New Brunswick. Save the dates, and look forward to updates!

Smart Growth is equitable growth. It is also restorative, as smart growth and redevelopment can help correct systemic racial and economic disparities. As New Jersey Future drives land use decision-making toward more equitable outcomes, we will be sharing useful resources and lessons in this monthly spotlight. Please give us your feedback and share with us any particularly insightful articles, talks, events, or videos that you come across.

March is Women’s History Month, and we are proud to showcase the contributions to New Jersey Future and to our state from women. We invited female staff members to serve as guest contributors to our daily What We’re Reading newsletter. While women comprise only 45% of the professional planning industry, approximately 75% of nonprofit professionals are women. We work to bridge that gap, which includes elevating equity issues women face as they interact with cities (“Many cities do not work for women”) and even their private automobiles (“Transportation for Everyone: Designing Safe, Sustainable Options for Women,” NJF blog). 

We’ve invited two staff members to serve as guest editors. Alesha Vega, Program Associate, recounted her experiences: “I grew up in a household surrounded by union leaders; the daughter of a prominent labor professor and a community organizer leader in Latinx communities. Throughout my adult advocacy, one critical theme has emerged: those who were impacted most by climate change are not the ones perpetuating or exacerbating the crisis.”

Deandrah Cameron, Policy Manager for Lead in Drinking Water: “I live and work in Trenton. My city has the highest elevated blood lead levels for children under five. As a woman working on lead issues, when I found out that lead mimics calcium and can cross the placenta during pregnancy, I was alarmed and realized the importance of the work I do, not just for the present generation, but for generations to come.”

In a blog coming later this month, hear directly from some of the amazing women on our Board of Trustees. These New Jersey women are building powerful networks, honoring their own trailblazing female mentors, and providing advice to the next generation of women leaders to foster a better Garden State for all. We are grateful for their commitment to New Jersey Future! (Spoiler alert: They don’t hold back!)

Our guest editors are just one of the recent adaptations we’ve made to What We’re Reading. Our daily digest is the place to see the latest New Jersey Future press mentions, statements, publications, and even social media highlights. Sign up here to join our What We’re Reading mailing list for a daily dose of NJF in your inbox.

• Policy and Program Coordinator: New Jersey Future (NJF) seeks a skilled, organized, and motivated individual to work with NJF’s Funding Navigator Program and on water infrastructure policy. This position addresses equitable access to water infrastructure funding through technical assistance and policy research.
• Jersey Water Works Communications and Events Intern (Spring/Summer 2024): The JWW collaborative seeks a current college student/recent graduate or high school graduate with 2+ years of experience to support day-to-day communications and the JWW team with planning and executing the annual membership meeting in July 2024. Their responsibilities will include creating customized resources and communication tools, assisting with the team’s day-to-day activities, and helping with the execution of large events.

• 03/11/2024: NJ's transit stations can help spur more affordable housing (NJ PBS)
• 03/09/2024: Business community reacts to governor's $55.9B budget (NJ PBS)
• 03/06/2024: Murphy eyes new fee on warehouse truck traffic (NJ Spotlight News)
• 02/28/2024: NJ must invest in stormwater utilities to address flooding (NorthJersey.com)
• 02/27/2024: Statements on Murphy’s Budget (New Jersey Globe)
• 02/27/2024: Policy experts at New Jersey Future comment on housing, public transportation, and water infrastructure following Governor Murphy’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Address. (Insider NJ)
• 02/27/2024: Controversial New Tax On Rich Corporations Proposed In New Jersey (Patch)
• 02/15/2024: Lead in the water, the walls, and the soil: Takeaways from the Lead Listening Session at the East Trenton Collaborative (Trenton Journal)

Guide to Local Climate Change Adaptation Planning

Working with the NJDEP, Sustainable Jersey, and statewide partners, NJF led development of the Guide to Local Climate Change Adaptation Planning, providing a model Climate Change-Related Hazard Vulnerability Assessment (CCRHVA) and planning process for New Jersey Municipalities that satisfies the requirements of the 2021 MLUL amendment.

New Jersey Stormwater Retrofit Best Management Practices Guide

NJF partnered with Princeton Hydro to create a New Jersey Stormwater Retrofit Best Management Practices Guide. This guide provides municipalities, counties, nonprofit organizations, developers, and property owners the tools to identify opportunities to retrofit existing stormwater BMPs and install new stormwater BMPs in built-out environments.

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