Affordable Housing

A three-judge panel has slowed Gov. Christie's effort to make quick changes to the state's affordable housing requirements. The state appeals panel issued a stay Tuesday on his plan for new affordable housing procedures and scheduled a hearing for February. Until then, the state was ordered to follow the affordable housing procedures that were in place before the state Council on Affordable Housing was abolished last month. The ruling is the latest in a 40-year debate. Courts have ruled repeatedly that New Jersey municipalities are obligated to provide housing that low- and moderate-income residents can afford.

A Bucks County Planning Commission official told Doylestown Township supervisors Tuesday that housing in the median price level is well beyond the reach of families with median incomes. "The affordable-housing crisis is much more than a matter of social concern affecting the less fortunate," said Kirk Emerson, director of countywide planning. "It has become a mainstream problem with far-reaching economic implications. " Emerson spoke to the supervisors and residents as part of a pilot program in which township officials offered to participate in a study with the county Planning Commission.

Mayor Gerald Luongo said last night that he has devised a plan to deal with the need to build affordable housing. His announcement came as more than 200 angry residents packed a Planning Board meeting to protest a proposed development that would include 48 units of affordable housing near Pitman-Downer and Fish Pond Roads. Protesting affordable housing has become a monthly ritual this year. This time, homeowners who live near the proposed development had their chance to tell the Planning Board why it should reject the Barnside Development Corp.

The state Council on Affordable Housing is set to take a long-awaited vote today on Moorestown's amended plan to provide housing units for low- and moderate-income individuals. The plan, debated for almost two years, provides for rehabilitating some housing in Moorestown and paying two other towns - Mount Holly and Beverly - to supply housing there under what are known as regional contribution agreements. The council, which enforces fair-housing mandates, is to vote separately today on an arrangement in which Moorestown would pay Mount Holly $4.1 million to take 204 units of its 691-unit obligation over three years.

Local nonprofit developers of affordable housing received almost $10 million in grants yesterday from the Federal Home Loan Banks of Pittsburgh and San Francisco, the largest awards to the region since the banks began funding low-income housing in 1990. The money is to go into 18 projects - 15 in Philadelphia and three in surrounding Pennsylvania counties - and produce 861 units of affordable housing. At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Nutter, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.)

Eladia Fonseca came to Philadelphia as a 9-year-old burn victim, her mother seeking better care for her daughter than what was available after their home in Puerto Rico destroyed by fire. Fonseca endured years of living in inadequate housing here, some of which had no heat, was infested with mice and bugs and was surrounded by drug activity. Now 51, Fonseca proudly showed off her cozy, newly renovated three-bedroom home, one of 58 affordable-housing units scattered around her Spring Garden neighborhood that are part of a $19.6 million project that was unveiled yesterday.

The Christie administration, providing details Thursday of its decision to eliminate the state's controversial affordable-housing agency, said the move would end a regulatory nightmare, but advocates called it an illegal giveaway to political allies. In late June, while Trenton was focused on approving a new budget, Gov. Christie announced several state-government reorganization plans. Those included the elimination of the independent Council on Affordable Housing and the transfer of its functions to the Department of Community Affairs.

Cherry Hill had its affordable-housing funds frozen Monday and was ordered to have a plan for spending the money approved by Superior Court. The order by Judge Robert G. Millenky followed allegations by the Fair Share Housing Center, which has been in litigation with Cherry Hill since 2001, that the township broke state rules about spending development fees intended for affordable-housing projects. "Fair Share has uncertainty" about use of the funds, "and the court finds reasonably so," Millenky said.

The Salem County town of Carneys Point needed to meet a state requirement to provide affordable housing, and developer John Bibeau had a plan: build an 88-unit apartment complex for disabled veterans and people with special needs and low and moderate incomes. He found an old factory building to serve as the site. He sat down with municipal officials, who had solicited him to do the project initially and to negotiate financing. In all, he said, he poured close to $750,000 into buying the property and paying fees for consultants, architects, and engineers.

The Bristol Township Council has reversed itself and will help the county get additional funding for a new affordable-housing program. The new program, titled Home Investment in Affordable Housing and referred to as HOME, is a federally funded plan that would help qualified people become first-time homeowners, help renters, assist nonprofit groups in rehabilitating homes for the needy, or even provide grants for new affordable housing. A meeting was held Thursday night at the behest of the county so that the Bristol Township Council could reconsider its position.

Mark Segal had been biting his nails, waiting for the call. Thursday morning, he was drinking a mug of sweet vanilla coffee in his den above the offices of the Philadelphia Gay News when the phone finally rang. His dream project, an affordable housing complex welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender seniors, had won a competitive bid for an $11 million state tax credit. "I've been trying not to cry," Segal said Sunday, barely succeeding in holding back the kvell . For more than three years, the 61-year-old founder and publisher of PGN has been planning, lobbying, negotiating, collaborating, and cajoling every social-service agency, activist group, and political leader he knows to make Philadelphia one of the first cities in the nation to meet the needs of the aging LGBT community.

Gregory Reaves and Leslie Smallwood-Lewis stood at the window of a third-floor unit at Diamond Green Apartments just as a SEPTA commuter train pulled away from Temple University Station, bound for Center City. "See," Reaves said, smiling. "You couldn't hear the train, could you? That's solid construction. " Undergrads are not known for adhering to a vow of silence, leading many landlords to shun them. Reaves and Smallwood-Lewis believe, however, that quiet surroundings and proximity to the Temple campus will quickly fill their five-story, 92-unit building with 350 paying students.

CHRISTINE Jackson Washington, founder of a nonprofit housing corporation and wife of the late Rev. Paul Washington, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate, died of heart failure Saturday at Cape May Regional Hospital. She was 83 and lived in retirement in Cape May. Washington had her first encounter with North Philadelphia after her husband was named rector of the Church of the Advocate, at 18th and Diamond Streets, in 1962 and he drove her through the neighborhood. A native Philadelphian, she had never set foot in the section of the city that had been written off as "the Jungle," her husband later told the Inquirer . "She saw the density of population and the streets not very clean," he recalled, "and her heart fell.

Christine Jackson Washington, 83, founder of a nonprofit housing corporation and wife of the late Rev. Paul Washington, rector of the Episcopal Church of the Advocate, died of heart failure Saturday, March 24, at Cape May Regional Hospital. Mrs. Washington had her first encounter with North Philadelphia after her husband was named rector of the Church of the Advocate, at 18th and Diamond Streets, and he drove her through the neighborhood. Though a native Philadelphian, she had never set foot in the section of the city that had been written off as "the jungle," her husband later told The Inquirer.

For many of the last decade's early years, construction of rental units (also known as multifamily housing) played second fiddle - sometimes even third fiddle - to building for-sale homes. In Philadelphia and other major cities, conversion of rental apartments to condominiums was the rule. In the suburbs, apartment construction was blocked by the shortage and price of adequately sized land parcels, endless state and local permit processes, and not-in-my-backyard opposition. Back then, from the federal government on down, the emphasis was on making everyone a homeowner - whether they could afford it or not. As a result, when the bottom fell out of the for-sale market in 2006-07 and people began looking for rentals, the pickings were slim.

IT IS SAFE to say that the failing economy has been nondiscriminatory to us all. White or black, young or old, rich or poor, we have all been affected in some way. But, sometimes, it just seems that some people are getting more help than others. All my life, I've been told to go to college because getting a degree would guarantee better jobs, better salaries - a better life. Well, here I am, six months after graduating from college, obtaining a bachelor's degree in corporate communications, working as a cashier at a fast-food restaurant.

TRENTON - Pushing back against Gov. Christie's use of executive power, an appellate court Thursday overturned his order to abolish the agency that governs towns' obligations to build affordable housing. Christie vowed to fight the ruling to the state Supreme Court, guaranteeing continued uncertainty around the complex and controversial affordable-housing regulations. The ruling, which places limits on a governor's ability to unilaterally eliminate parts of government, also could have ramifications if the governor tries to bypass the Democratic Legislature and use executive powers to remake government in other ways.

In the Region Affordable housing at top level Housing affordability in January reached its highest levels since record-keeping began in 1970, the National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. The index used to track affordability is based on the relationship among median home price, median family income, and average mortgage interest rate. Fixed 30-year interest rates are below 4 percent, and median home prices have declined to pre-housing boom levels. - Alan J. Heavens Chester County hospital trims staff Chester County Hospital and Health System in West Chester trimmed its workforce by 45, or 3 percent, last week "in response to downward pressure on health care revenues across the industry," according to a statement.