Affordable Housing in NJ Historic Buildings–the Road Trips
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The Clare Estate, Bordentown NJ
This past week, Ron Emrich, Preservation New Jersey’s Executive Director and I went to see more than 40 historic or “old” buildings that had been converted into affordable housing under the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) guidelines and regulations in the state.
New Brunswick conversion into affordable housing
We went literally from one end of the state to the other to look at sites that the Gina Fischetti, Deputy Counsel from COAH, and local housing advocates, had identified from their data base.
Many of the historic properties that impressed us the most were large conversions of existing factories and convents into senior housing, assisted living facilities, family housing and mixed income housing. Some of the sites we saw used poor preservation practices, while others were really exemplary examples.
Silk City Lofts, Patterson NJ
We saw small projects containing perhaps 4 units, to very large projects with more than 1o0 units. Many of the projects were done by developers, but others were completed by local nonprofits. None were better than the others, but all now provide decent and often very attractive quality housing for low and moderate income people in the state. We hope through the case studies we develop to encourage more communities to use underutilized historic buildings for quality affordable housing.
Funding for this research is from the NJ Department of Community Affairs. We have been fortunate to have the unqualified support of COAH, whose Executive Direct Lucy Vandenberg, has been more than welcoming of this effort. We have also learned a great deal from attorney Adam Gordon from Fair Share Housing Center who provided early assistance to us as we were developing our list of properties to investigate for case studies. The staff at New Jersey Futures, including Tim Evans and Executive Director Peter Kasabach also provided some helpful suggestions about properties that should considered for case studies.
Glenridge Avenue, Montclair NJ
We will now narrow down our list of the best we saw and begin making contacts with the project sponsors to learn more. Already Alexander Balloon, Andito Lloyd and Laura DiPasquale, all interns working for Preservation New Jersey or Heritage Consulting Inc. have added considerably to our knowledge about these projects. The completed case studies will be posted to the Preservation New Jersey web site late this summer.