Why is South Jersey so different from the PA suburbs?

[getatag]

Originally Posted by southbound_295

Section 8 is federal dating back to 1937. Mt Laurel was a decision of the NJ Supreme Court.

I always thought Section 8 housing dated to the 60s or 70's. The federal housing act was 1937 but it didn't include Section 8 until the 60s or 70s.

I checked my memory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectio...%20Section%208

[Hedonism]

The story I heard was that a black girl who grew up in Mount Laurel in the 1950s and '60s threw a fit because she couldn't afford to live there as an adult.


She got legal representation and Section 8 was born in 1974.

[southbound_295]

Originally Posted by getatag

I always thought Section 8 housing dated to the 60s or 70's. The federal housing act was 1937 but it didn't include Section 8 until the 60s or 70s.

I checked my memory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectio...%20Section%208

I graduated from high school in 1969. My senior year they changed the history class that was required to include social studies. We got into section 8, but back then section 8 was different. That was the projects.

However, back to this thread, the Mt Laurel decision was the NJ Supreme Court. It was not a federal Court or HUD. Over the years section 8 has changed drastically. It was a state court decision that happened about the time that section 8 changed drastically.

I was very tuned into Mt Laurel. I lived in an older section of Cherry Hill. Cherry Hill was almost built out. Some farm land near my house was set aside as green space. One of the builders involved in Mt Laurel sued the township for the land to build high density low income apartments. Neither the roads nor the sewers would support what they proposed. It was ugly for several years and the people in my development, which resulted from a farm sale in 1940 and was built from 1940 to WWII and after the war until 1950 watched it very carefully. We were in some of the town's low cost housing.

[southbound_295]

Originally Posted by Hedonism

The story I heard was that a black girl who grew up in Mount Laurel in the 1950s and '60s threw a fit because she couldn't afford to live there as an adult.


She got legal representation and Section 8 was born in 1974.

How old were you when Mt Laurel was decided?

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Hedonism

The story I heard was that a black girl who grew up in Mount Laurel in the 1950s and '60s threw a fit because she couldn't afford to live there as an adult.


She got legal representation and Section 8 was born in 1974.

It was a woman who had lived in Mount Laurel for years — and like her Black neighbors, the township was zoning her out. I wouldn't call that "throwing a fit."

But the Mount Laurel I decision was a state, not a Federal, court case, and — as I said in my prior post — it was issued in 1975, the year after the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development launched the Section 8 rent voucher program.

Once again, the two developments are unrelated.

The woman's name, by the way, is Ethel Lawrence, and two local NAACP branches and Black and Hispanic plaintiffs in Camden joined her in the suit.

BTW, one of the reasons I do not oppose gentrification is because not all the low-income residents leave a neighborhood that gentrifies — and the lives of those who do remain get better too.* In essence, Ms. Lawrence and her fellow plaintiffs were simply asking for that kind of gentrification, not the kind that forced them out, to be allowed to proceed, which it probably would have had Mount Laurel officials not tried to zone and regulate out its poorer Black residents.

There is a company called Fair Share Housing Development whose stated mission is to build housing in "high-opportunity communities" within reach of low-income households in the South Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia. Of course, it takes its name from the language in the Mount Laurel decisions. Its offices are in one of its first developments, at 1 Ethel Lawrence Boulevard, Mount Laurel, NJ 08054. It's also the development arm of the Fair Share Housing Center, the Cherry Hill-based advocacy group that fights to make sure the state's communities live up to the "fair share" obligations in spirit as well as letter (Mount Laurel's desultory provisions for affordable housing, zoning it for out-of-the-way locations on land with issues that would make the housing cost-prohibitive to build, led it to get sued again, resulting in the Mount Laurel II decision against the township in 1988).

Mount Laurel Doctrine | Fair Share Housing Center

(This provides a fuller and better explanation of the history of the cases and their influence than the Wikipedia article on the subject, which is flagged for violating Wikipedia's neutral-point-of-view rule. The point of view here is far from neutral, either, but since the whole point of all this was to fight prejudice, I don't find the viewpoint objectionable at all.)

*I also favor it here specifically because this city has a long and proud history of promoting homeownership up and down the socioeconomic ladder, and the homeownership rate among lower-income Philadelphians is higher than the national average too. For most of these families, their home is their only financial asset, and gentrification gives them the opportunity to cash in on that asset if they so choose, often after years of disinvestment around them and lack of other assets at home. My one concern is that the unrealized value end up in their pockets and not in those of some predatory buyer who makes a lowball cash offer, then fixes it up and reaps the profits.

[MarketStEl]

Originally Posted by Hedonism

Nah.


Section 8 began in Mount Laurel.


Do some more research.

Nope, you do the research. I've provided you with links. Here's one more:

Section 8 Program Background Information — U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

Here you will read that

The Section 8 Program was authorized by Congress in 1974 and developed by HUD to provide rental subsidies for eligible tenant families (including single persons) residing in newly constructed, rehabilitated and existing rental and cooperative apartment projects.

(emphasis added)

You have both the origin and the timeline wrong. Again, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued the Mount Laurel I decision the year after the United States Congress authorized the Section 8 rental subsidy program.

Also, "affordable housing" is housing designed to be affordable to a lower-income occupant without requiring the use of a rent voucher.

Both it and the rent vouchers have the same aim but get there via different roads. And the aim is to help get poor people out of the concentrated-poverty cul-de-sac.

[Hedonism]

Originally Posted by southbound_295

how old were you when mt laurel was decided?

27.

[toobusytoday]

Originally Posted by tusco08

After some time on Google Street View I've realized that pretty much across the board PA & NJ suburbs do not look the same at all.

In PA older towns are dominated by rowhouses, while in NJ they're mostly single family homes. Towns like Haddonfield built at a similar time to Media look vastly different. The architecture in towns in SJ reminds me more of Cleveland or Milwaukee, with lots of bungalows and houses that look like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9126...7i13312!8i6656.

I've searched but can't find a town in PA that looks like Collingswood or Glassboro... Every town has a stark transition from rowhomes to large suburban homes. It seems like NJ is more standard across the board with less variation from the smallest to largest houses. There are not many huge mansions in NJ, but also much fewer rowhouses.

The PA suburbs are richer while the NJ ones have more of a working class presence. Also the PA suburbs tend to maintain more of their own identity, with far more colleges & jobs, while NJ is mostly bedroom communities.

Why are there so many differences in the look and feel of these places when they're just across the river from each other? Do you have any idea what causes this?

Note:
Houses built 1900-1940 are much more common in NJ than PA, while PA has more built before 1900. Look at the population counts for towns like Collingswood which grew from 1,633 to 12,685 during that time, while in Norristown only grew from 22,265 to 38,126. Basically NJ counties experienced serious growth at the turn of the 19th century while PA had similar growth a few decades earlier. This may be a contributing factor.

Here's the OP. Nothing about section 8 housing. Let's stick with the topic. Posts after this one that are not on topic will be considered to be hi-jacking the thread and will be removed and infractions will be given. My tolerance for race-baiting subjects is gone.