WATSON COLEMAN: NEW REPORT UNDERSCORES IMPORTANCE OF BROADENING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING

NEW REPORT UNDERSCORES IMPORTANCE
OF BROADENING ACCESS TO AFFORDABLE HOUSING
Brookings Institution Study Showing Growing Rates of Concentrated Poverty
Among Working Poor Further Justifies New Affordable Housing Law

(TRENTON) - Assembly Majority Leader Bonnie Watson Coleman today said a new national study showing more working poor families are being trapped in urban areas with concentrated poverty proves New Jersey was correct to do away with the immoral state law that allowed wealthy suburban towns to stockpile affordable housing into cities.

The report from the Bookings Institution - titled "Reversal of Fortune: A New Look at Concentrated Poverty in 2006" - analyzed IRS data to determine where the most Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) recipients lived. Researchers found an increase nationwide in the number of EITC filers in urban zip codes. The study measured a 25.5 percent rate of concentrated working poverty in the Camden/Philadelphia census region, up more than 10 points since 1999; the Northern New Jersey/New York City region's concentrated poverty rate grew nearly four percent, to 20.1 percent.

 "New Jersey is clearly out in front of a growing national issue," said Watson Coleman (D-Mercer). "Housing policies that stockpile working families in areas rife with poverty and away from available jobs are immoral. Every working family has a basic right to live where they wish to live, not where certain communities tell them where to live."

Watson Coleman teamed with Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. (D-Camden) in spearheading a new law that overhauled New Jersey's affordable housing rules to do away with "regional contribution agreements," deals by which wealthy suburban municipalities would pay poorer cities to shoulder their affordable housing burden, among other reforms.

The two regions together saw more than 268,000 new EITC filings between 1999 and 2005.

EITC provides a federal income tax credit to working families earning up to $39,783 per year. New Jersey also provides an EITC tax savings to qualifying working families.

Researchers said the results were especially troubling in that "concentration of poverty has multiple impacts ranging from discouraging private sector investment, reducing local job opportunities, burdening public schools, and damaging the mental and physical well-being of residents who live in its midst."

The Brookings scholars recommend policies to "forge connections between the residents of high-poverty communities and their surrounding labor markets," as well as strategies that would "foster greater economic integration throughout metro areas."

"The Brookings Institution has put in black-and-white what we in New Jersey have known for decades: housing policies that allow towns to cherry-pick who can afford to live within their borders are counterproductive," said Watson Coleman. "Working families who are denied access to affordable housing options will never be able to hand-off a better future to their children. Opponents can either accept the facts or they can remain blind to reality."

The Brookings Institution is an internationally recognized non-partisan policy "think tank" based in Washington, DC.

The report, published by Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program,  is available at: http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/08_concentrated_poverty_kneebone.as....

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