Income-restricted housing at Redding Circle, offered through Princeton Housing Board. Homes such as these are subject to a huge waiting list. (click to expand.)
New Jersey’s Council On Affordable Housing (COAH) recently updated the numbers of income-restricted homes that each municipality in the state must provide. For Princeton, the headline was simple: no new income-restricted homes are required. This is because Princeton has more income-restricted homes than many municipalities of equivalent size, and because there is little undeveloped land in Princeton (click here for full report). Princeton’s elected officials expressed concern at the COAH decision, as 2,000 people are on waiting lists for income-restricted housing in Princeton. But this reaction completely misses the point: COAH’s rules are not the most important thing determining housing affordability in Princeton.
