Also – Inflicting these massive developments on municipalities like ours, in the name of affordable housing, was a cornerstone of the Murphy administration.
Here is the Overlay Map
Belmar Council Meeting – March 10, 2026
Also – Inflicting these massive developments on municipalities like ours, in the name of affordable housing, was a cornerstone of the Murphy administration.
Here is the Overlay Map
Sorry. Can’t have it both ways.
The previous administrations ignored the affordable housing requirements while also allowing insane development projects. These insane development projects are NOT forced upon us BECAUSE of affordable housing requirements. They are forced upon us because we ignored the requirements.
Affordable housing rules are NOT the bad guy here. Everyone acts like it’s going to lead to bums and vagrants. All you have to do is look up the affordable housing qualifications. Please do. In some instances, there’s nothing affordable about it. In others, it simply allows working class people (you know, most of us) to afford a condo in this town.
Please stop pretending that using an equation based on median income to allow teachers and cops to live in a nice community is somehow a bad thing.
There are people who are so partisan in their narrow mindedness that they are for school vouchers and against affordable housing. When they are basically the same exact thing.
Buccafusco is a big part of this mess. Don’t leave him out. Residents are being left out of the decisions and that was highlighted by other residents. He came in hot promising to solve these problems and be transparent. In reality he made them much worse and now doesn’t want to fess up. All he did was promise he would stop over building.
(Deleted by Editor.)
I did not get the Bruce Springsteen reference.
**********, Walsifer, and Doherty.
ALL guilty of kicking the can. Buccafusco has had the unfortunate timing of having to deal with the chickens coming home to roost, but his communication skills are not good.
(Asterisks are mine, Buccafusco did NOT kick the can.)
The unfortunate timing? That’s all he campaigned on. Don’t you remember he presented himself as THE problem solver to any new development.
What did he or the other council members solve?
Face it, Belmar is in big trouble and the pace of development has exploded under Bucafusco & his council.
The admin is correct, Buccafusco didn’t kick the can. The can was kicked by Doherty (like crazy) and Walsifer. With the new Mediterranean project, our responsibility for affordable housing has now been satisfied. So, we are not in ‘big trouble’. Our trouble with affordable housing is now over. And future project developers will not be able to threaten legal action if we don’t approve their greedy monstrosities. You can thank Buccafusco for that. I know, I know, you won’t, it’s ok, you don’t have to.
And, in a politics as usual move, the next mayor will brag that they solved the problem. A problem that has already been solved.
Are you saying Buccafusco did a 360 and went from blocking the project to supporting it? Did Buccafusco make the decision or did a court? We were never really filled in after the closed door meetings.
Why are so many other projects with no affordable housing?
(Our affordable housing mess has been explained during many meetings in excruciating, painful-to-hear, detail, Editor.)
Admin – In fairness to prior administrations, wasn’t the mount laurel decision and affordable housing requirements on hold under the Christy administration only to be lifted when Murphy came into office? If so, it wouldn’t have been prudent for an administration to move forward with filling these affordable housing quotas if the requirement was potentially going away.
(There were changes for the governing agency and requirements under Christie, but it never went away. This is a confusing, complicated issue, please send any articles or documentation if you have other info. The push really came with Governor Murphy. Meanwhile, Blossom Cove Road in Middletown remains pristine, Editor.)
That’s not at all true. The Supreme Court unanimously declared COAH dead in early 2015, and effective July 16, 2015 housing advocates were free to pursue builders remedy litigation against municipalities that had not obtained substantive certification of their plans by COAH. A year later, the Planning Board — of which Mayor Doherty was a member — noted this at page 23 of its August 2016 Master Plan Re-Exam report, and that the Borough had not yet filed a declaratory judgment action.
By letter dated February 11, 2019, Mayor Walsifer’s recently appointed Borough Attorney warned about the need to adopt an Affordable Housing Plan, and to require developers to meet their affordable housing obligations. He closed with “I am disturbed that the Borough is lacking in this regard and worried about possible litigation in the future and a ‘builder’s remedy’ lawsuit which would leave the Borough in great jeopardy.”
Despite these clear warnings, no action was taken to protect the Borough by either Administration.
Did Mr. “I Don’t Know What’s Going on in This Place” from South Lake Drive accuse Anita of being a **** *****? She has probably been to more council meetings over time than everyone in that room combined, including current council members. His comment was offensive and uncalled for.
(Asterisks are mine. Anita attends other meetings too and is very well informed, Editor.(
It’s pretty funny that Murphy gets the blame for this. It’d be like someone running a stop sign and then blaming Murphy for putting a stop sign on that corner.
Former mayors kicked the can, Murphy’s fault.
Potholes on your street? Murphy
Cat scraping your furniture? Murphy
Dry patches on your lawn? Murphy
MDS seems to be a big problem with the folks on this blog. But funny how no one talks about it.
This probably won’t get posted. And that’s ok.
Isn’t that exactly what EVERY politician does….well mainly democrats…..hence the name TDS
Oh and Murphy is and was USELESS to NJ
Ah, a classic sufferer of MDS. It’s funny how he lives in your head rent free. Come on man there’s a whole world out there, don’t let your MDS keep you from enjoying it.
(Asterisks in name are mine, Editor.)
Unless it has changed over the years one of the biggest shams with affordable housing is once you qualify for it you do not have to re-verify your income throughout the years so long as it remains your principle dwelling on record. At least this was how it was for purchased condos under affordable housing.
Also….teachers and cops have already been evicted from recently converted affordable housing in Belmar because they do not qualify for the income requirements. Ie. They make too much. Can someone please post the income requirements for these apartments? I think folks would be surprised at how low it actually will be.
Hi
Your post is confusing. You seem to contradict yourself. First you say that people can qualify for affordable housing and never have to verify what they make ever again as long as they stay at the address. But then you say that “teachers and cops have been evicted” from affordable housing because they make too much. Which is it? They don’t have to verify what they make once they’re in, or they get evicted after they are in because they had to verify and make too much? Also, you say “recently converted” affordable housing. Belmar doesn’t have any “converted” affordable housing. We just have new affordable housing. The ones on 10th Ave and in the new project on 35 will have about 20 units.
Anyway, here are the requirements for the Belmar condos (they use median income for Monmouth, Ocean, and Mercer aka region 4) There are lower requirements but that is for low income housing, not the affordable housing requirements we are satisfying.
1 person $50k-$75,440
2 people $55k-$80,800
And so on.
Starting salary for a NJ cop is somewhere between $45k and 63k. For teachers in NJ it’s about $60k. Both occupations qualify for single person affordable housing (so not sure what you’re talking about in your post). If they were married and both making north of $60k each (so over $120k), they would not qualify. Unless they had a child together, then they would make it under the 3 person tier.
I hope that clears things up for you.
To clarify….many apartments in town that were built in the last 10 years did not have to provide “affordable housing.” This administration renegotiated with them and at that point they became affordable. For the tenants that were occupying those units, they at that point had to qualify for affordable housing. They couldn’t and were evicted. Had they occupied the affordable housing from the beginning they would not have to re-qualify.
thanks for clearing that up. Based on this info and latest OPRA pulled for salaries in Aug. 2025, Belmar has zero full time police officers that will qualify for affordable housing. Thanks.
who wants those teachurs around anyway?
Neither “Guest” nor “Sure, Here you go,” got it right, or at least not entirely right. Here are the basic facts about income eligibility requirements for affordable rental units in our region, how the affordable units must be allocated in each building, and why due to the failures of the two prior administrations and foot-dragging by the current administration Belmar, is just now on the road to becoming compliant with its affordable housing obligations. For reasons I explain below, these issues are especially confusing in Belmar due to the history of the three completed redevelopment projects in which prior administrations required the developers to dedicate 12 one-bedroom affordable units for “moderate” income households.
FACT: “Sure, Here you go” is wrong when he suggests that affordable housing units in Belmar must be set aside only for moderate income households (he uses the term “median income,” which has a different meaning), and states that the requirements “for low income housing” are different from the “the affordable housing requirements we are satisfying.” New Jersey’s affordable housing regulations, which are called the Uniform Housing Affordability Controls (UHAC), require that rental buildings with more than 4 residential units, restrict 20% of the units as affordable units. Since their initial adoption in 2004, these regulations have always required that affordable units be apportioned among eligible moderate, low and very-low income households, using a formula that also apportions the units based on bedroom count. Prior to the 2024 adoption of the new housing law (known as “A4” for the Assembly Bill that spelled it out) and an amendment the UHAC regulations to reflect A4’s changes, developers of Third Round projects could pay money into the municipality’s affordable housing fund in lieu of including all 20% of the required units on site. (This is why the developers of some of the recently approved Belmar projects were able to make payments to the Borough’s affordable housing fund in lieu of including affordable units.) The requirement to apportion the affordable units among the three income eligibility categories has not changed. By way of example, the proposed 48-unit residential development at 701-705 Seventh Avenue, that my wife and I are investors in, will include 10 affordable units, which the regulations require be apportioned as follows:
• 1 two-bedroom affordable unit for a very-low income household;
• 1 one-bedroom, 2 two-bedroom and 1 three-bedroom affordable unit for low income households; and
• 1 one-bedroom, 3 two-bedroom, and 1 three-bedroom affordable units for moderate income households
This issue is particularly confusing in Belmar because neither the Doherty nor Walsifer Administrations took the necessary steps to adopt or obtain judicial approval of their fair share plans when the opportunity to do so arose. This was despite clear warnings to the Doherty Administration from the Planning Board in August of 2016, and to Mayor Walsifer from his newly appointed Borough Attorney in early 2019, that they needed to take steps to get their fair share plans approved or risk losing the Borough’s immunity from builders’ remedy suits. Instead, they left the owners of the buildings who did include affordable units to lease these 12 units on their own as best they could for years – more than a decade in the case of one of the buildings — without adopting any of the affirmative marketing and other ordinances that would have enabled the units to be leased in accordance with the UHAC regulations that had been in effect since 2004. If they had done so the Borough would have adopted the necessary ordinances and appointed an administrative agent to perform the process of affirmatively marketing the affordable units throughout Region 4, conduct the random selection process required to select prospective tenants from the applicants who meet the income-eligibility requirements for each unit, prepare the appropriate leases each year thereafter verify the income eligibility of each household before renewing their leases.
The Buccafusco Administration bears some measure of blame here too. In the case of the 12 one-bedroom moderate income units that the redevelopers did include in their projects and have been leasing to tenants who at least initially met the published affordability limits. It was not until the fall of 2025 – two months after we entered into consent orders spelling out the process to bring the 12 units into compliance with the UHAC regulations, that the Borough began adopting ordinances and taking steps to enable the owners of their buildings to lease those units in accordance with the UHAC regulations. Sadly, as the result of the Borough’s delay one of the 12 affordable units sat vacant for more than 6 months, when it could – and should — have been occupied by a household that needed an affordable place to live.
FACT: Because he was apparently unaware of the requirement that affordable units be apportioned between moderate, low and very-low income households, Sure oversimplifies the income eligibility requirements for our three-county region. For 2025, the maximum household income to be eligible for a one-bedroom “moderate income” affordable unit is $80,800. (Sure’s $75,440 figure is for a “0 bedroom” or studio apartment, none of which are proposed in Belmar). For a two-bedroom unit for a moderate income eligible household, the 2025 limit is $96,000, and for a three-bedroom moderate income unit, the limit is $112,000. For low income households, the corresponding 2025 income limits are $50,500 for a one-bedroom unit, $60,600 for a two-bedroom unit, and $70,000 for a three-bedroom unit. For very-low income households, these limits are $30,300, $34,335 and $42,000, respectively.
FACT: Both “Guest” and “Sure, Here you go” are incorrect about the annual income verification issue. Dating back to 2004, the UHAC regulations have provided for this annual income verification process to be performed by an “Administrative Agent,” who is a duly certified housing professional designated or otherwise approved by the municipality pursuant to ordinance. Administrative Agents use lease forms that comply with the UHAC regulations and provide that a household whose combined income no longer meets the eligibility limit applicable to the unit must move out or face eviction. The Administrative Agent must then follow the “affirmative marketing” process to advertise the unit throughout the Mercer-Monmouth-Ocean County Region and the perform the random selection process from the literally thousands who apply before the unit can be leased again.
It was not until June of 2025 – 10 months after I first wrote to the Borough’s redevelopment counsel to request they work with us to bring the developers’ 12 affordable units into compliance with the UHAC regulations – that the Borough’s redevelopment and affordable housing attorneys entered into consent orders with the developers to address the problems caused by the Doherty and Walsifer administrations’ failures to take the steps necessary for the 12 units to have been leased to affordable households in compliance with the UHAC regs.
These consent orders ensure that the Borough received credit for these 12 units against its Third Round fair share obligation, while delineating a process for transitioning all 12 units into compliance with the UHAC regulations. These consent orders enabled nearly all of the existing tenants – none of whom had been selected through the 2004 UHAC-required affirmative marketing and random-selection process — to be “grandfathered” and remain in their units for so long as they could demonstrate that they continue to meet the income-eligibility requirements applicable to moderate income households. The consent orders designate on a going-forward basis which units must begin being leased to households with “low” or “very low” income limits in the future, as they become available.
Thank you for that condensed and simplified explanation. Sheesh, no wonder Doherty and Walsifer decided to make it someone else’s problem.
Sounds like you’d need to be a CPA just to figure out if you even qualify for affordable housing. Well, I may have been wrong in my calculations, but this seems to be that Mr Pringle’s break down is an excellent argument in support of affordable housing. It’s not vagrants and drug dealers loitering around. It’s working class people who want to live in a beautiful place like Belmar.
Most republicans support school vouchers, but are against affordable housing. Yet they are both a similar form of social engineering. The biggest difference being that affordable housing is funded by the developer, while school vouchers are funded by government (tax payers).