On Oct 22, 2008 the Planning Board met to discuss the current status of the Township's COAH (Council on Affordable Housing) plan. James Bell, our contracted COAH project manager, provided a draft outline of the plan.

Page 1 of the draft shows that in COAH rounds #1 and #2 we had a COAH obligation of 766 which we exceeded by 184 credits. On page 2 we see our round #3 COAH obligation of 911 units. (Note: a unit can be an actual dwelling or an extra credit for a particular type of dwelling. For instance a low income apartment counts as more than one unit.)

The table on page 2 then subtracts our prior round excess from 911 and continues to subtract the COAH credits from various up and coming projects. (Note: Franklin 2 Home Owner and Rental are commonly referred to as the YMCA project and as yet no work has started on it.)

After all of the subtractions we are left 141 units short of the required number of units. In addition, in July the state dropped another bombshell in the form of "very low units" (VLUs). These are units that made available at very low rates to people of very low income. This requirement is entirely new and therefore we were unable to plan for it. Our total obligation spelled out at the bottom of page 2 is 118 units but three planned projects include 38 VLUs leaving us with a need for 80.

Understanding the VLUs is critical to understanding what drives the Franklin COAH plan. VLUs, as you might expect, are difficult for projects to support economically. Thus the numbers of units any project can provide are limited. Bear in mind we can't just submit garbage to COAH, we have to show that the projects we submit are viable and have developer buy-in. Because they are so hard to provide and are a major chunk of the 141 total units we need, it is the VLUs that drive the numbers in our COAH plan.

Mr. Bell provided our staff with estimates of how much we could push the numbers i.e. how can we can negotiate with developers to keep the number of physical units down while maximizing the number of VLUs? After negotiations in order to exactly fulfill our VLU obligation we exceeded our total obligation by 186.

Again this is a draft. The Planning Board will decide on a final plan next month and the Council will make the final decision in time to submit our application to COAH by December 31st.

Phil Kramer

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