A study assessing the real estate situation in Hudson County reveals that despite several new initiatives to create homes and rein in costs, Jersey City still faces severe challenges in terms of keeping pace with demand for housing.
Regional Plan Association (RPA), an independent non-profit, recently released a report entitled “Housing Jersey City: Assessing Current and Future Gaps.” The organization crunched the numbers when it comes to demographics, land uses, and housing characteristics of Jersey City as part of an effort to assess housing needs and drive solutions for years to come.
The headline from the report estimates that by 2032, Jersey City could face a housing shortage of between 27,000 and 36,500 units. The report considered data including overcrowded households, vacancy rates, the unhoused population, potential household formation, dilapidation, and projected flood loss when calculating their conclusions.
Additionally, 36,000 Jersey City residents with incomes below the city’s median of $94,000 are currently considered cost-burdened. This reality exists even though Jersey City added almost 26,000 units to its housing stock from 2010 and 2022, which was more than triple the per capita production observed in the larger New York Metropolitan Area.
Despite the building boom, market rent in Jersey City has grown by 50% since 2015. The report found that the persistently high housing costs in Jersey City stem from several factors including a broader metropolitan housing deficit caused by years of under-building throughout the region.
The report also noted that Jersey City has been building smaller homes in recent years. Over two-thirds of the housing growth in the last 24 years was in studio and one-bedroom units, with housing of four bedrooms or more actually seeing a net loss of units.
Despite the issues, the report does give Jersey City better marks compared to the region for taking deliberate steps to increase housing production. The moves cited include a new tiered tax abatement policy and a comprehensive city-wide housing plan.
The report notes that there are approximately 11,900 total units of subsidized housing in Jersey City, which represents 7% of New Jersey’s statewide total. The Jersey City Division of Affordable Housing has overseen the development of 1,625 income-restricted units since 2019, 497 of which have been completed with the remainder in progress.
Recommendations for Jersey City to address the housing shortage include looking at best practices for creating more missing middle housing, promoting adaptive reuse and redevelopment of underutilized commercial and industrial properties. But the report notes that based on population size, counties in northern New Jersey have built more housing over the last decade when compared to the rest of the metro area.
“Jersey City has been in a housing boom for nearly two decades, yet residents still struggle to find affordable places to live,” said Zoe Baldwin, Vice President for State Programs at RPA. “Our analysis shows that when it comes to housing policy, it takes more than a village – it takes a whole region.”
To stabilize housing costs, the report recommends that municipalities in other parts of the region, like Connecticut, the Hudson Valley, Long Island, and lower-density areas of New Jersey and New York City, produce their share of housing to meet demand.
