VENTNOR – In back to back special Zoom meetings June 30, the Planning Board and Board of Commissioners unanimously adopted the city’s Fair Share Housing Element Plan, agreeing to make it part of the city’s Master Plan.
The city, along with all other municipalities in the state, was required to comply with the Fourth Round Housing Element and Fair Share Plan signed into law in 2024, by the June 30 deadline. The Fair Share Housing Act replaced previous requirements set by the Council on Affordable Housing, which was the state agency tasked with ensuring affordable housing for residents that was abolished by former Gov. Chris Christie during his tenure.
The act requires Ventnor to fill its present and prospective need of 60 affordable housing units. All units must be deed-restricted for low- to moderate-income residents for a minimum of 30 years. The city never moved to fill the requirements set in prior rounds.
Affordable housing income limitsAccording to Planner Tiffany Cuviello Morrissy, who authored the plan for 12 local municipalities since the beginning of the year, the city will address its requirement of 60 affordable housing units in a variety of ways. Morrissy conducted an inventory of available buildable parcels, reviewed existing housing stock, demographics and probable future developments to determine where the need for low- to moderate-income housing units could fill the need cited in the Fourth Round requirements.
Because Ventnor lacks available vacant land to build affordable housing units, the plan includes a vacant land adjustment of three units. The city will use a variety of methods to create the remaining 57 affordable housing units over the next 10 years.
The city will obtain credits for existing “transitional housing” units, such as those at several Hansen House and Surfside Recovery locations, which offer housing and services for very low-income individuals in recovery over a six-month period.
The city will adopt an affordable housing program that requires a 20% set aside for new multi-family residential developments of 10 units or more, with 13% of them for very low-income households, which will reduce the city’s obligation to 51 units.
The city will adopt a Development Fee Ordinance and establish an Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which can be used to market affordable housing units. An “overlay zone” will be created, encompassing the entire city, to meet the city’s unmet need.
The city could also achieve 24 units through a housing rehabilitation program offered by the Atlantic County Improvement Authority, which brings substandard housing up to code, and obtain additional credits for units located at the age-restricted Shalom House senior citizens high-rise located in the Ventnor West area.
Adopting the plan will protect the city from a “builder’s remedy lawsuit,” which could supersede local zoning ordinances and result in many low- to moderate-income units being built in a single location.
Planning Board Chairman Jay Cooke called the document “a landmark thing” and commended the city for “grabbing the bull by the horns” and getting the longstanding requirement on the books.
“It’s an excellent piece of work,” Cooke said. “This will be a useful tool for the Planning Board in the future and it protects the city.”
Mayor Tim Kriebel called the report a “highly technical, complex set of formulas” that the administration takes seriously as a way to protect the city from builder’s remedy lawsuits.
“Ventnor has never addressed affordable housing,” Commissioner Lance Landgraf said. “We’ve been taking hits online for rushing this through, but there are a lot of municipalities rushing this through today because it is a difficult process to get through.”
View the report here:
https://www.ventnorcity.org/media/Documents/Ventnor%20HEFSP%206-20-25-Full%20Document.pdf
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