{"id":7710,"date":"2016-02-25T01:35:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-25T06:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=7710"},"modified":"2016-02-25T01:40:43","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T06:40:43","slug":"brick-officials-only-22-of-affordable-housing-counted-attorney-replaced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/02\/brick-officials-only-22-of-affordable-housing-counted-attorney-replaced\/","title":{"rendered":"Brick Officials: Only 22% of Affordable Housing Counted; Attorney Replaced"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gavel<\/a>

Gavel (Credit: Brian Turner\/Flickr)<\/p><\/div>\n

The attorney representing Brick Township\u2019s interests in the ongoing litigation over municipalities\u2019\u00a0affordable housing quotas has stepped aside at the request of the township, with an influential North Jersey firm taking his place.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Surenian, an affordable housing specialist based in Brielle, will be replaced by the firm of Decotiis, Fitzpatrick and Cole, a politically influential firm with offices in Teaneck, Princeton and Jersey City.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want to feel really comfortable with whoever your attorney is,\u201d said Mayor John Ducey. \u201cWe just weren\u2019t comfortable with the attorney we had.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Decotiis firm has previously served as labor counsel for the township.<\/p>\n

The new hire comes just days after\u00a0Ocean County Superior Court Judge Mark A. Troncone ruled that several municipalities, including Brick, must provide affordable housing<\/a> dating back to 1999, when the state stopped calculating quotas. He capped each community\u2019s quota at 1,000 units. The Fair Share Housing Center, an advocacy group that often sues to increase affordable housing obligations, had argued Brick owed 3,000 housing credits, or about 1,500 units.<\/p>\n

Township officials say they are being short-changed by the Fair Share Housing Center and similar intervenors who calculate affordable housing quotas under the state\u2019s \u201cMount Laurel\u201d doctrine. Ducey said as it presently stands, the groups count just 23 percent of senior citizen units and 22 percent of units set aside for developmentally disabled residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf each of those numbers were at 100 percent, our [quota] would be zero, and we need the right attorney to fight for us,\u201d said Ducey.<\/p>\n

As the litigation has made its way through the courts, housing advocates and some in state government have said they want to crack down on towns dedicating their affordable housing quotas to housing for seniors and disabled citizens rather than low income families. Lacey Township recently approved a 110-unit affordable housing rental complex after the state indicated that too much\u00a0of its housing quota was dedicated to senior citizens rather than low income families.<\/p>\n

Ducey said \u201cnot one\u201d more unit of affordable housing is needed in Brick, a sentiment with which residents at this week\u2019s township council meeting agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have houses in town selling for $150,000 asking price, and there are foreclosures all over the place, how affordable do you have to get?\u201d asked resident Larry Reid.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo they want us to build vertically?\u201d asked Greenbriar resident Nan Coll, arguing that there isn\u2019t enough space in town for any significant amount of new housing. \u201cI don\u2019t, and I don\u2019t think other people do.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The attorney representing Brick Township\u2019s interests in the ongoing litigation over municipalities\u2019\u00a0affordable housing quotas has stepped aside at the request of the township, with an influential North Jersey firm taking his place. Jeffrey Surenian, an affordable housing specialist based in Brielle, will be replaced by the firm of Decotiis, Fitzpatrick and Cole, a politically influential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[1505,24,1504,1872],"class_list":["post-7710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-affordable-housing","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-coah","tag-fair-share-housing-center"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/gavel.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-20m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}