Downtown Jersey City set to lose 65 low-income apartments with the sale of Dixon Mills; New report confirms: NJ is fucking expensive.
By Jon Whiten
Back in October, we reported on the dearth of low-income -- or even mixed-income -- housing in Jersey City, especially in the area experiencing the orgasmic sensations of condo-boom: downtown.
Since our report, there have been two key related developments -- one means a big loss for affordable apartments downtown, while the other paints the dollars-and-cents picture for all of New Jersey's renters (hint: it's not pretty).
First, as the Jersey Journal reported last month, Dixon Mills -- one of the few apartment complexes we called that did have set-asides for low-income residents -- was sold for $78.5 million. The building, which is currently all rentals, will be -- shocking! -- converted to condos. The new owners will be offering the real estate equivalent of "first dibs" to current residents to buy their units. Of course, this likely won't help those living in the 65 low-income apartments -- we doubt that these tenants will have the significant savings that will be necessary to buy a condo likely priced at no less than $200,000.
The special-rate units won't be expiring just yet, though. Before the sale, the low-income provision was set to last for about four more years, according to the Journal. The Jersey City Redevelopment Agency helped to extend that provision for one additional year. This sounds good on the surface, right? After all, the renter-friendly policy would evaporate anyway, and now it just lasts one year longer. But chances are, if the buildings hadn't changed owners, and had remained apartment buildings, the low-income renters would have -- or at least could have -- continued to be accomodated. But with the buildings going condo, the chance of the low-income rentals remaining is virtually none.
So downtown Jersey City loses some key low-income housing -- the kind that always works best, too: set-aside apartments mixed into one complex with market-rate units.
We'd like to see Grove Pointe absorb the 65 units into its development, plain and simple. Consider that a public challenge. With 458 rental units supposedly hitting the market, 65 lower-rate units shouldn't signficantly hurt the bottom line, either.
In other news, a report released this month by the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows that New Jersey is the fourth most expensive state for renters. The report finds that the yearly income needed to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair-market rent (as defined by HUD) in the state is $44,112, or an hourly wage of $21.21, or expressed in even more distressing terms, three full-time jobs at minimum wage.
When combined with a report released last year by the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey, we can clearly see that the state's tough rental market hits Hudson County disproportionately hard. Of the state's 21 counties, HudCo has the highest number of renter households, at 159,888, as well as the highest percentage of renter households, at 69 percent. As we reported in October's story, Census figures from 2003 show that HudCo's median income of $38,781 is also much lower than the state's, at $56,366.
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