Days after New Jersey was hit with severe flooding in the wake of Tropical Storm Ida, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced an affordable housing crisis. The Governor called for more affordable housing throughout the state as real estate prices continue to soar, creating housing inequity.
It’s not the first time the New Jersey Democrats called for more housing. A landmark case in Mount Laurel forced rural towns across New Jersey to start building massive affordable housing apartment complexes. The state forced rural towns to tear down tens of thousands of acres of fields and forests to build huge affordable housing buildings, complete with large asphalt topped parking lots.
To this day, the state is still forcing towns to cut down their trees and build bigger, taller, and more equitable. That means high density, low-income residential projects that will cause more drainage and runoff problems across the state.
If you stop and think about how every town in New Jersey has been affected by the Mount Laurel Doctrine and the overdevelopment it sparked in those towns, it’s no wonder why New Jersey is now experiencing mass flooding like it has never seen before.
When you pave over forests and open fields, you’re creating a water crisis. That water has nowhere to go. Instead of filtrating back into the ground, it’s running off into the streets, into low-lying neighborhoods, and into already swelling rivers that can’t handle the sheer amount of runoff caused by overdevelopment.
Flooding is synonymous with overdevelopment. It’s not just “Global Warming” as President Joe Biden and Murphy declared today.
Their own liberal policies are also contributing to the flooding of New Jersey. If you build more apartments, the flooding will come. Before looking at weather models and future forecasting, to understand the flooding that happened in New Jersey, you need to look at historical maps and aerial photos.
New Jersey is the most densely populated state and Governor Phil Murphy wants to make it even more overpopulated.
In July, Murphy committed $200 million in the state budget to build more affordable housing in a state that’s bursting from the seems.
The Fiscal Year 2022 Budget—which Governor Murphy signed last month—and other actions taken by the Governor commit to over $200 million in new and expanded State investments that will support the Murphy Administration’s comprehensive housing affordability strategy.
State funds will allow for the financing and construction of hundreds of new affordable housing units.
If Governor Phil Murphy and President Joe Biden were truly serious about changing the future, that future will not include more overdevelopment. It will require builders of these units to make larger investments into the communities they destroy. It will force them to invest in their local community infrastructure such as roads, schools, sewers, drainage and it will force the Murphy affordable housing developers to focus more on the environment and less on P&L sheets.
This won’t happen because the builders are all tied to the politicians. They don’t call it Dirty Jersey for no reason.