The Mount Laurel Doctrine: New Jersey's Unfulfilled Promise of Affordable Housing
In the shadow of New Jersey’s tree lined sprawling suburbs (in the political definition) and gleaming office parks lies a paradox: a landmark legal mandate for equitable housing, celebrated as a national model, yet perpetually deferred by bureaucratic inertia and local often racist and classist resistance. The Mount Laurel Doctrine, born from state Supreme Court rulings in 1975 and 1983, sought to dismantle exclusionary zoning laws that walled off wealthier towns from low-income residents.
New Jersey’s affordable housing policy dates back to the mid-1970s with a series of New Jersey court decisions that began in 1975 and which established what has become known as the Mt. Laurel Doctrine. In Southern Burlington County NAACP v. Township of Mt. Laurel (1975), the New Jersey Supreme Court concluded “that every such municipality must, by its land use regulations, presumptively make realistically possible an appropriate variety and choice of housing. More specifically, presumptively it cannot foreclose the opportunity of the classes of people mentioned for low and moderate-income housing and in its regulations must affirmatively afford that opportunity. —Town of Wayne
Five decades later, its vision of integrated, accessible communities remains aspirational—a testament to the gap between judicial idealism and the grind of implementation.
The doctrine emerged as a moral counterpunch to America’s suburban segregation. Mount Laurel Doctrine I declared that municipalities could not use zoning to shirk their “fair share” of affordable housing; Mount Laurel Doctrine II ordered them to proactively plan for it. The rulings invoked New Jersey’s constitution to affirm housing as a fundamental right, challenging towns to design inclusive futures. Yet, the machinery meant to realize this vision—the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH)—became mired in political battles, procedural delays, and legal loopholes—COAH was dismantled in 2024. Towns weaponized studies to minimize obligations, offloaded responsibilities by paying into underfunded regional trusts, or simply waited out the clock. By 2015, when the Supreme Court intervened to revive the process, the state had a backlog of over 200,000 needed units.
Ruling in Mercer County on Thursday, state Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy denied a request by more than two dozen municipalities to pause implementation of the legislation enacted in March. The law is designed to speed enforcement of the Mount Laurel Doctrine, a landmark set of court rulings that require New Jersey towns to provide their "fair share" of low- and moderate-income housing. —NORTHJERSEY DOT COM 1/25/25
Housing is a feminist issue. Women, especially Black and Latina women, make up the majority of New Jersey’s cost-burdened renters, with unparterned women with children facing eviction at nearly twice the rate of other households, and Black unparterned parents even more. Exclusionary zoning perpetuates a cycle where women are trapped in under-resourced urban centers, distant from resourced suburbs with funded schools, better job opportunities, and healthcare access. These disparities are not accidental. They echo a legacy of suburbanization that idealized the male breadwinner and the stay-at-home mother, while rendering low-income women—especially those raising children alone—invisible in communities designed for nuclear families.
L. Lo Sontag
Today, the costs of failure are etched into New Jersey’s landscape. Aging urban centers and under resourced exurbs bear disproportionate responsibility for affordable units. Meanwhile, affluent suburbs remain enclaves of privilege, their exclusion sustained by whispers of “overcrowding” or “lost character”—euphemisms for deeper anxieties about race (typically antiblackness, though in the days of Trump it increasingly is also Latine immigrants) and class. The delays have exacerbated inequality: essential workers commute hours from distant affordable hubs, and generational poverty tightens its grip.
Recent reforms, including court-appointed mediators and streamlined guidelines, hint at progress. Some towns, like Montclair (somewhat) and Evesham (more so), have embraced mixed-income projects, proving integration’s viability. Yet, the path forward remains fraught. Local governments operate like the racist States’ Rights and still wield disproportionate influence, and legislative fixes face pushback from mayors and homeowners fearing tax hikes, change, and Black people.
The Mount Laurel saga underscores a national dilemma: Can a society wedded to local control address systemic inequity? New Jersey’s struggle reveals both the power of judicial boldness and its limits when cultural and political winds blow against it. In Trump America we can no longer afford this type of racism and classism that always ends up hurting women and children the most.
As housing costs soar, the doctrine lingers as a question: Will the state recommit to its promise, or let the ideal of inclusive communities slip into myth? The answer may define not just New Jersey’s suburbs, but the soul of its democracy.
