NJ Well Positioned to Accelerate Housing Opportunity
Melanlie Walter is New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency Executive Director
The housing crisis did not emerge overnight. It emerged over decades of policy choices and missteps, chronic underinvestment, and disinvestment. Now, reviving housing affordability is a cornerstone of building a thriving economy for all New Jerseyans. Although we can’t reverse decades of housing market crisis-making overnight, New Jersey is taking real strides to correct it. Just this month, five new affordable properties opened, creating 600 new homes and representing a $250+ million investment. Thousands of additional affordable homes now in production will soon open. We must capitalize on this momentum to not just effectively deploy New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency’s existing resources, but to expand the tools available to increase housing opportunity across New Jersey.
As the NJHMFA executive director, I am acutely aware of the impact decisive investment has on New Jersey’s housing market. NJHMFA’s critical statewide policy changes, legislative collaboration, and targeted investments move markets, creating opportunity. NJHMFA has supported first movers in many communities, funding multifamily, mixed-income, and mixed-use projects like the VanSciver project in Trenton, the first market-rate multifamily investment in the Capital in decades.
NJHMFA has also invested in preservation and new construction in areas where gentrification has pushed residents past their financial limits, including Sterlingside in New Brunswick, Terrell Homes in Newark, and Bayfront Promenade in Jersey City. NJHMFA also makes homeownership more accessible for thousands of first-time and first-generation homebuyers each year. Creating broad opportunity cultivates a statewide housing market that does not repeat the mistakes of the past.
It’s not just about the end result. NJHMFA fosters a LIHTC development environment that continues to welcome more first-time, emerging, and MWBE participants. Three new entrants were awarded credits in our most recent 9% round, securing critical investments that are building a broad, inclusive development community. This isn’t happenstance; it results from deliberate policy and incentives.
Each of these steps improved the New Jersey housing market. However, as anyone trying to rent or buy today can tell you, the challenge remains acute. The national and state housing markets confront falling equity pricing, tighter credit, and waning federal subsidy. So, we press on.
As NJHMFA demonstrated during COVID, affordability need not fall further behind because the market is tough. New Jersey’s affordable housing production accelerated during COVID; we kept the production pipeline open and ensured our first-time homebuyers weren’t closed out of a rapidly inflating market. Many other regions stalled, which hindered recovery. This is another such moment.
A tightening market cannot be allowed to close low- and moderate-income households out. We must evolve to fill the gaps the market creates.
The Sherrill Administration understands this urgency. The Governor, through Executive Order 17, is empowering state government to deploy technology, data, and resources to make quality, affordable homes more available.
NJHMFA is working with our sister departments and agencies, CDFIs, banks, developers, and community organizations to implement this vision. We keep New Jersey’s housing market moving forward, regardless of what’s playing out on the national stage.
We continue to gain ground when we collaborate, use old tools in new ways, and embrace the opportunities this market creates—not yield to its pressures—as we make New Jersey more affordable for every family that calls it home.
