Cost of housing unknown

Within the past two weeks, the Lakewood Township Committee has taken what it believes will be a significant step toward increasing the community’s stock of affordable housing. The governing body sold land to a pair of nonprofit agencies that want to build affordable housing.

The committee members must walk a tightrope and balance the rights of residents who live near the land that is targeted for development with their desire to provide additional housing opportunities in a community that shows no slowdown in residential growth.

At this stage it appears that the governing body has made a decision that will cause a burden on the residents in the area projected for development. They will see a wooded area cleared and replaced with dense multifamily housing. Traffic near their homes will increase significantly if all of the units that are being discussed are ever built.

And, in the end, there is no guarantee that people who live in Lakewood now will get the majority of the affordable housing units to be built.

According to a representative of New Jersey Housing and Neighborhood Development Inc., one of the agencies that has been sold land by Lakewood, plans call for the construction of between 300 and 400 units near Pine Street. The representative estimated that four-bedroom homes could sell in the range of $160,000 to $170,000 and that three-bedroom units could sell in the range of $100,000 to $140,000, depending on the amount of subsidies received.

Three- and four-bedroom units are not the type of housing that will attract young couples looking for a place to start out.

They are the type of units that will attract people with children who will enter the Lakewood public schools and create more cost there, or attend private schools and add to the Lakewood Board of Education’s already untenable busing costs.

The Lakewood Affordable Housing Corporation has received land closest to Oak and Vine streets. Mayor Ray Coles said there could be as many as 125 affordable units built on this parcel. He said the likely design is townhouses.

The Lakewood Township Committee is making what seems to be a good-faith attempt to do what officials in other communities are loathe to do, namely, give people who cannot afford upward of $300,000 a chance to buy a home. For that they are to be commended.

However, this housing will come at a cost to Lakewood that is as yet not calculated and that fact is something that should be of concern to residents.