End of Affordable Housing at Tricia Meadows (low income, 2013)

[sj08054]

The South Jersey Sun - Tricia Meadows affordable housing may end

I am curious whether the long term plan is to convert this area to expensive housing down the road.

[NJGOAT]

AFAIK, the developer always intended the community to be the mobile home park. What happened is that when the community was built, it was one of the six developments that were sued for not including low income units. Those six individual lawsuits were bundled together and then decided as what became the Mount Laurel II decision, which is considered one of the landmark cases for equal housing. That decision is what spawned the creation of the COAH in NJ which now governs the process and rules as laid out in the collective Mount Laurel decisions. However, as the original six cases were decided in 1983 and the COAH was not created until 1985; many individual cases including the original six of which Tricia Meadows was a part, were settled by the judges. The judges created a "builder's remedy" solution on the portion of affordable and moderate housing that must be contained in each of those developments, established rates, etc. In some cases, like the units in Tricia Meadows, there was an expiration date for the subsidized prices/rates.

So, I don't think that the developer had any intention, at least originally to create more expensive housing. They have made no moves to do so and I doubt they could given the complexity of the owned/leased house/land setup. No one is going to buy a $500k house in the middle of a trailer park, so anything would require buying out everyone.