Hudson County Executive Craig Guy and county officials are backing an initiative to repurpose county-owned land in Jersey City for 1,500 new homes, including affordable housing.
In a recent opinion piece published in NJ.com, housing advocates characterized the project, known as the Hudson County Affordable Housing Initiative, as a proposal to turn 10 acres across four sites in Jersey City into mixed-income housing complexes with permanent affordable units for working families, seniors and lower-income residents.
Housing advocates Samra Haider, the president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Adam Gordon, the executive director at the Fair Share Housing Center, and Zoe Baldwin, the vice president of state programs at the Regional Plan Association, said that since Hudson County already holds title to the land, the project can advance without assembling sites for many years, which would otherwise slow down private developers.
Although the opinion piece is vague about the exact location of the proposal, the initiative mentions that one proposed site is the parking lots surrounding the County Plaza office complex at 257 Cornelison Avenue, near Journal Square. That project could yield as many as 700 homes, with 200 affordable units; 30% would be reserved for families across income ranges, including 20% for lower-income families. Another 10% of those homes would be set aside for middle-income families.
The opinion piece says the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation invested over half a million dollars to support the project.
A July report by Gothamist says Jersey City Mayor James Solomon is also on board with the project.
A December report in the Jersey City Times about a similar proposal said the parking lots around the County Plaza office complex could support as many as 634 units – including 150 affordable units – across 12 acres. That redevelopment would also include 1,700 parking spaces and three acres of open space.
The same report also mentions two sites off Newark and Baldwin avenues, where the county intended to add at least 226 housing units with 45 affordable apartments and 225 parking spaces. It also says the Hudson County Improvement Authority parking lot at Vroom Street and Tuers Avenue could be converted under that proposal. The lots in the Bergen Square area could be replaced by 456 units – 90 of which would be set aside for affordable housing – and 332 parking spaces.
County officials were evaluating a fourth undisclosed site, which could yield 493 units – including 150 affordable units – and green space, the report said, but that proposal would have yielded 1,809 units instead of the 1,500 mentioned in the opinion piece.
The report in the Jersey City Times says County Executive Guy has been working on the proposal since 2024.
While the opinion piece argues that the Hudson County Affordable Housing Initiative could serve as a role model for the rest of the state, there is already a similar project underway in Bergen County.
Jersey Digs reported in January 2025 that at 133 River Street in Hackensack, county officials are moving forward with plans for a new 387,000-square-foot building that includes 168 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments for workforce housing and veterans, as well as a five-story commercial building with a new bus terminal, street-level retail and offices for county government. That proposal would also redevelop the brownfield site where the Bergen County Probation Center once stood.
