Mine Hill Planning Board Approves Fair Housing Plan. What Happens Now?

 

by Brian T. Lynch, MSW

The Randall Hill Forest is the area off Randall Ave. between Weber Lane and Spring Brook. It is the undeveloped land surrounding the white which is the MUA water tower. 

News: On Tuesday, February 24, 2026, The Mine Hill Planning Board approved the state-required Fair Housing Plan which compels the town to meet our quotes for low-cost housing. “A gun is to our heads,” as Mayor Sam put it before the vote, which is figuratively true. The Planning Board lawyer, engineer, and Mayor Sam did a good job of explaining the law and their rationale behind the plan to the nearly full room of residents in attendance.

In short, the current developer-friendly laws create new affordable housing options that force towns to consider high-density developments in whatever undeveloped land a developer owns, even if the town has a limited amount of undeveloped land or environmentally sensitive lands under zoning restrictions. New construction is necessarily high-density housing because there is no way that low-cost units can be profitably built under current market conditions. Low wage families simply cannot afford the rent required for a builder to recoup construction costs. As a result, developers have to construct eight luxury, high rent apartments for every two low-rent apartments they build.

Also, New Jersey’s Fair Housing law contains strict protocols for determining how many low-cost housing units each town must add to its housing stock over a period of time. The penalty for failing to create a plan to meet these low-cost housing quotas subjects towns to lawsuits by developers that, if upheld, grant the developer what is called the “builders remedy.” This allows builders to develop high-density housing on their property despite local zoning restrictions related to density, and certain other restrictions. 

The practical implication for Mine Hill is that, in order to meet our current housing quota, we must reopen consideration of developing the 84 acre Randall Hill property with its uncapped mines. Less well appreciated is that this land is also an important water source for Spring Brook. Spring Brook, in turn, contributes clean water to reservoirs that serve 1.2 million New Jersey residents downstream.

There is currently funding through the Morris County Municipal Utilities Authority to purchase Randall Hill because of its importance as a water resource. If both the town and the owner are in agreement to the sale, it would then be purchased and deed to the town. This possibility has not been explored by the town. But, as of Tuesday, when the Planning Board voted on our Fair Housing Plan, the option to preserve the land ended for now. Legally, the town cannot pursue other options under the plan, and no public funding can be used to purchase it from the builder. Instead, the law requires the town to rezone the property to allow the owner, Jason Ellison, to build up to 305 housing units. That is the number of units Mr. Ellison believes he can build.

It gets tricky from here because the owner has to submit a site plan that mitigates the dangers associated with uncapped mines. When this was attempted by the prior owner, Mr. Ellison’s father, the cost of mitigating the mines made the project financially unfeasible. It is possible that this might be the outcome again. If that happens, the town could then move forward towards preserving this tract of land. This would exempt it from further development in the future and save what is both an important water resource and a beautiful forest with all its wildlife.

Commentary: Land developers, I believe, are tools of the billionaire class which need safe, long term investment options. For more than a decade there have been more billionaires and fewer long term investment opportunities for them. The consensus among the richest families in America is that land ownership, which yields monthly rental income, is a good way to grow wealth and preserve it for generations to come. That is why most development projects today are for rental units, not single-family homes. In fact, single -family homes are being bought up by large corporations as rental and investment properties. This is causing both home prices and rental rates to rise. We could be looking at a return to feudalism with its land barons, peasants, and tenant farmers.

There is no stopping this trend at present through either state policies or judicial action. Powerful people have framed the need for affordable housing debate as a crusade against towns that exclude the poor by their zoning laws. This is a real phenomenon, but it isn’t the main reason why there is little affordable housing for the poor. The main reason is that this same billionaire class, in an organized collaboration, stopped giving most employees annual raises based on company profits. That began back in the 1970s.

Forty years ago COLAs (cost of living adjustments) were a separate thing to keep wages on par with inflation? For decades now COLAs are almost the only type of raises workers are occasionally given. Profit sharing raises are the exception. Profits today mostly go to CEO’s and wealthy stockholders. This failure to share profits means real wages are stagnant. Most families are losing buying power year over year as the size of the American economy has almost tripled. Today, the number of workers that can't afford to buy a home (or food, medicine, etc.) has grown to crisis levels.

Housing costs are also affected by market conditions that raised construction costs faster than inflation. And yes, many communities in New Jersey do have restrictive zoning schemes that discourage construction of low-cost housing for the poor. There is always been a class prejudice built into many town zoning laws. This has to be rooted out, which the Fair Housing law is designed to do.

This, in summary, is the backdrop we are up against.

But the specific issue of many residents of Mine HILL are up against right now is trying to conserve the Randall Hill forest, an environmentally important property. It this regard, it is our affordable housing quota that matters most, not any specific development project. There is nothing in the law that says low-cost housing must be new construction. Any way that we can grow affordable housing satisfies the law.

So, for the sake of preserving a single ecologically important forest, the six (6) additional low cost apartments we need to fulfill our quote for this round can more easily come from rezoning single-family housing to include duplex housing for owners that have extra space or sufficient land to add an apartment. We don’t have to play the developers game.

Mine Hill, like most towns, have zoning restrictions that prevent homeowners in older homes from converting their extra space into duplex housing. As a result some homeowners in single-family houses are under financial and social pressure to build non-conforming apartments to help pay their mortgage or shelter their adult children who can’t afford to rent in Morris County. These unauthorized units, nevertheless, provide a cache of affordable, albeit underground, housing which may not be counted in our affordable housing quotas.

Research suggests this is a widespread and growing phenomenon, particularly in high-cost areas, with estimates in some specific, dense localities suggesting that as many as 25% to over 50% of certain types of older housing stock may contain unauthorized units. In specific urban neighborhoods with high demand, it is estimated that over 75% of basements may be rented illegally.

Similar but less dramatic trends are observed in older suburban, "inner-ring" neighborhoods where homeowners convert spaces to manage high mortgages or create "missing middle" housing, or duplexes, in areas that technically only allow single-family detached homes. These apartments exist because they offer more affordable housing options, helping to fill the gap between single-family homes and large apartment buildings. Because they are unregulated and unregistered, these apartments often lack proper exits, ventilation, or smoke detection, leading to high health and safety risks for low-wage tenants. It is in everyone’s interest to recognize these non-conforming, but affordable apartments as a significant part of the suburban housing supply.

Given this research, it is possible that Mine Hill may already have a shadow stock of low-income housing to meet our Round Four fair housing quota. Instead of acknowledging these non-conforming housing units or encouraging homeowners who want to add an apartment to their house, we are allowing dangerous conditions for many low-income families living in non-comforming housing units. With the acute need for low-income housing driving homeowners to skirt the law, we should instead embrace these conversions and work with homeowners to bring these units up to safety standards. We should ease zoning restriction when it is prudent to do so and issue special variance to owners of certain “eligible” homes that can be converted to duplex housing. Mine Hill currently has housing funds available for grants to upgrade substandard housing.

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Here is an article that explores housing conversion concepts from 2017. It is entitled, “Learning from a Non-Conforming Neighborhood.”

Here is the Amended Fourth Round Housing Element & Fair Share Plan

   

   For more information on Rebirth of the Randall Hill Forest.

          For my article on Randall Hill Development Back in Play