Struggling to Find Affordable Housing? Assemblyman Miller is taking action to help.

By Mike Hayes, Gothamist

In 2023, Tammy Antunes and her husband turned to New Jersey’s affordable housing program in the hope of finding a home that is both big enough to raise children and that was within a manageable commute to their jobs in North Jersey. Antunes works as a nanny. Her husband is a truck driver, and their combined income of $80,000 wasn’t enough to buy or even rent at market rate in the state’s pricey housing market. But more than two years and nearly two dozen separate housing applications later, the couple is still searching.

“I feel very frustrated,” Antunes said. “We're trying to build a family.”

New Jersey has one of the country’s most comprehensive strategies for building affordable housing. Gov. Phil Murphy said the state has built 400,000 affordably priced housing units over the past 50 years and it’s currently embarking on an effort to add over 80,000 more new homes for low- and middle-income residents over the next decade. And yet, even the program’s most ardent supporters admit that the process for actually securing one of those homes is both long and confusing — a problem made worse by the fact that demand for affordable units is quickly outstripping supply. What the state lacks is a centralized platform where applicants can get all the information they need to secure an apartment, housing experts say. And many are calling on lawmakers to pass pending legislation that aims to streamline the process.

"The need is just tremendous out there."

Liz DeCoursey, CEO of Greater Middlesex & Morris Habitat for Humanity

For Antunes, who’s looking for apartments with a price range of around $1,500 to $1,700 a month, that disjointed system has meant a series of housing lottery numbers that never materialized results. In one case, she said she was told her lottery number for an apartment was void and that she had to reapply because a new management company was taking over the property. For other properties, she said she never heard back.

Many of the state’s affordably priced units for rent and for purchase can be found at the state’s official New Jersey Housing Resource Center’s website. But in order to get details like how many units are available at a particular property and when, who the landlord is and whether there’s a waitlist or lottery, prospective tenants need to go through one of the various non-profit organizations scattered across the state that help connect low- and middle-income Jerseyans with housing.

However, Liz DeCoursey, CEO of Greater Middlesex & Morris Habitat for Humanity, said resources for her organization and others are stretched thin.

“The need is just tremendous out there and you want to help everyone, but obviously we can't,” she said, adding that demand for affordable homes from Habitat is off the charts. It specializes in constructing and rehabbing homes that it then sells at below-market prices. DeCoursey said that in 2021 her branch had a housing interest list of about 2,500 people. Today it’s over 5,000.

Increased demand overall has led to longer and longer wait times that now drag out for years. DeCoursey said her organization recently sold an affordably priced condo to a woman in Randolph who’d been trying to secure affordable housing for half a decade.

“That’s not  uncommon for us. We just try and tell them to keep trying,” DeCoursey said.

Sharon Clark, executive director at Central Jersey Housing Resource Center Corporation, said she never tells her clients how long it might take to find a place they can afford.

“It's an impossible question to answer,” she said. “ We're in a housing crisis. Gone are the days where you just apply and they have units that are vacant and you can move in.”

Her agency is focused on three New Jersey counties; Somerset, Hunterdon and Middlesex. So oftentimes, she said those willing to live in different areas need to be in touch with multiple service providers.

“ We're going to pretty much refer them out because I don't know every program,” she said. “So if you ask me about Bergen County, I don't know the resources there.”

Matthew Hersh, vice president of advocacy for the Housing & Community Development Network of New Jersey, a nonprofit that provides support for housing service providers around the state, said the process for obtaining affordable housing in New Jersey should be made more efficient.

Last year, Assemblymember Cody Miller introduced legislation that would establish a centralized directory for affordable housing across New Jersey, including housing for senior citizens and veterans. The bill also calls for the state to provide information like whether a property has a waitlist and instructions on how to apply for any housing unit.

“If you have to maneuver multiple websites to figure out where housing is available, it's kind of like trying to find a needle in the haystack,” Miller told Gothamist. “By creating that streamlined statewide directory, we're basically laying the foundation for a more effective and efficient housing system.”

The bill stalled in the Assembly after it was passed by the Senate. But last month, it was passed out of the Assembly Housing Committee. Miller said the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee is currently considering amending it to include reimbursements to towns for the cost of collecting and sharing information about housing in their municipalities. If the Appropriations Committee passes it, he said, the bill would still face another vote in the full Senate and Assembly. But Miller said he was confident that it could get passed this year.

“ I'm kind of like a dog with a bone. So my hope is that it will be on the next [Appropriations Committee] voting session. And if it's not, I will try and make sure that it's on the next voting session after that,” he said.

Hersh acknowledged that even if the bill is passed, obtaining affordable housing will continue to require persistence.

“ It's like health care, you have to be your own best advocate,” he said.

Clark said her organization gives applicants a 40-question intake form at the start of the process with questions about income, debt, credit, what assets they might own, as well as how many people they’ll be living with. That way, she said, her clients are ready if an administrative agent for the property asks her clients for documents. She said her organization also offers regular webinars to help people understand what they’re in for when pursuing affordable housing in the state.

“ [Applicants] have to follow up, constantly check your email, have your documents ready to upload, be ready for a lottery,” she said.

Antunes said it’s difficult to drive around the areas where she works and see new luxury buildings with advertisements enticing people to live there. She knows her and her husband can’t afford the market-rate rents that come with those places. And even if there are affordable units, she said she thinks it’s unlikely she’d be able to get one.

Antunes said she recently got a call for an apartment she applied for in Caldwell. The service provider told her that the management company wanted some financial information from her, she said – a sign that they were in the running for an affordable unit. She said she sent the records, but after playing the game for this long, she’s not getting her hopes up.

“ To be honest, I don't even remember applying for that place in Caldwell,” she said.