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Testimony of Stephen H. Shaw On behalf of the New Jersey Builders Association
And the
National Association of Home Builders
Before the United States House of Representatives
Committee on Resources
Subcommittee on National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands
On
H.R. 1964
The Highlands Stewardship Act
June 17, 2003
Chairman Radanovich, Ranking Member Christensen and members of the National Parks, Recreation and Public Lands Subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you today to share the views of the New Jersey Builders Association (NJBA) and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) concerning H.R. 1964, the Highlands Stewardship Act.
My name is Stephen Shaw and I am a life long New Jersey resident and second-generation builder and developer who has been in the home building business for over thirty years. For the past thirteen years, I have been the President of Shaw Built, Inc., an award winning medium-sized building company specializing in the construction of custom single-family homes in Morris, Hunterdon and Sussex Counties in New Jersey. I am the Immediate Past President of the NJBA and serve as a Councilman in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.
On behalf of the 2,000 members of the NJBA and the 211,000 members of the NAHB, I would like to express our opposition to H.R. 1964, the Highlands Stewardship Act, introduced by Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ). While we appreciate the efforts of this subcommittee and Representative Frelinghuysen to address growth issues in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, the NJBA and NAHB are opposed to the Highlands Stewardship Act.
In my home state of New Jersey, we are facing a severe housing shortage. According to New Jersey’s State Plan, approximately one million households, which represent about 2.5 million people, live in sub-standard, over-crowded housing for which they pay too much. The average new home in New Jersey costs $308,000; and the average existing home costs $224,000. To put it in context: the state's median household income is about $52,000 per year. A family at the median income level, assuming a generous down-payment and reasonable property taxes, can afford a house that costs perhaps $150,000 - well below the average resale and average new home price in New Jersey. Over the decade of the 1990's, New Jersey's population grew 87% more than in the 1980s; but our housing starts declined by 36%. The imbalance between the demand for and supply of housing is denying one million middle and modest income families to one of life's basic necessities: a safe, decent and affordable home.
Mr. Chairman, the option to halt future growth, as a means of controlling present frustrations, is unrealistic. Future growth in the Highlands region is not an exception to this reality. The Highlands Stewardship Act will only exacerbate the housing shortage in New Jersey by slowing or even halting the opportunity to provide affordable housing in the Highlands region of the state and throughout the entire Highlands region.
The Highlands is a geographic region that encompasses over two million acres stretching from western Connecticut across the Lower Hudson River Valley and northern New Jersey into east-central Pennsylvania. This area is home to over 1.4 million people and abuts one of the most populous metropolitan regions of the nation. The region is home to interstate highways, airports, a variety of single family and multi family housing, industrial complexes and corporate parks. The region also includes brownfield sites, gas stations, and shopping complexes, as well as, mountains, farmland, lakes and streams. The communities within the Highlands are vibrant and dynamic and, like most communities, will continue to grow to accommodate the needs and desires of people who choose to live, work and raise their families in the Highlands region.
The Highlands has been the subject of two congressionally authorized and funded U.S. Forest Service studies: first, in 1992 and, most recently, the New York-New Jersey Highlands Regional Study 2002 Update (the 2002 Update). In both instances, the reports accompanying these studies attempt to both qualify and quantify the natural resources of the Highlands and the threats posed to the region’s natural resources by “a growing population, urban decline, and suburban sprawl.”
Representatives of NJBA were asked to participate by the U.S. Forest Service on the Highlands Work Group and ensure a regional perspective for the study. Unfortunately, our representatives were just a few of the over one hundred members of the Work Group. While our members had hoped to provide the U.S. Forest Service study team with specific input on the scope and subjects of the study, our participation was limited to little more than reviewing and commenting on the 2002 Update. As a result, we believe that the 2002 Update fails to recognize the critical importance of housing needs and economic impacts in the region. Further, the 2002 Update makes extremely general statements and negative predictions describing the condition of the natural resources within the area. The lack of specificity in the modeling and scientific data presented in the reports opens the reports to contradiction and debate. Because these studies comprise the basis for the legislative action we are contemplating today, it is important to comment on the shortcomings of these reports, specifically the 2002 Update.
The 2002 Update presents a broad scale assessment of the water quantity and quality, forest, habitat, recreation, and farmland resources of the New York and New Jersey portions of the Highlands region. The 2002 Update concludes that the Highlands’ resources are being placed in jeopardy by development pressures. In order to draw the conclusion that the area’s natural resources are threatened by residential expansion, the 2002 Update uses general modeling methods to make predictions about what will occur in the future. These modeling methods are replete with assumptions and generalities.
For example, in an effort to quantify the effect future development will have on the region, the 2002 Update establishes a low-constraint and high-constraint build out analysis. The low-constraint build out analysis, which assumes that existing policies and conditions will be continued indefinitely, showed that build out would be reached in 2021 with a 47.6 % population increase. The high-constraint build out analysis, which increases development constraints by removing areas that can be developed and changes some policies, showed that build out would be reached in 2035 with a 26.3% population increase.
This attempt to quantify the influence of future development is flawed in a number of ways. First, build out may never occur. Both models assume that all available developable land will be utilized. Further, the two scenarios alter the pace of build out by using different and widely general assumptions, leading to the conclusion that increased development will occur. Second, the scenarios completely generalized local zoning regulations and ignored any opportunity for zoning changes. Third, both scenarios removed areas that were already built to maximum zoning density and areas that were zoned for commercial and industrial use. To omit these areas from consideration completely disregards the possibility, and reality, of community revitalization and infill development, such as brownfields redevelopment.
The report employs additional modeling methodology with similar levels of assumptions and generalities to describe the future conditions of the area’s water resources, forest resources, and watersheds. As above, it is through application of a generalized principle and coarse scale that the report provides the inevitable conclusion that these resources are imperiled.
Additionally, the 2002 Update fails to assess the strain that development constraints will have on the local economies of the Highlands communities. If actualized, the restrictive modeling of the high-constraint scenario would deny the opportunity for 300,000 residents (as compared to the predicted population of the Highlands using the low-constraint scenario) to live in the Highlands region. Further, the model fails to consider the economic benefit those new residents would provide to the region. The 2002 Update is noticeably silent on this issue, failing to adequately address any consideration of economic impacts, either in the modeling employed or in the potential impacts of the conservation measures sought in the report, might have on the region.
Coupled with the conclusions and recommendations of the 2002 Update, H.R. 1964 will have an adverse affect on housing affordability and housing choice in the Highlands region. As stated earlier, the Highlands is adjacent to one of the most populous metropolitan regions of the country and presents a desirable location in which to live, work, raise a family and recreate. Land preservation and development restrictions in the Highlands can only serve to increase the cost of land and, therefore, the cost of a home, and prohibit people from living in a home of their choice, in a setting of their choice and at a price they can afford.
In an effort to address the short-term pressures of growth within the Highlands, the Highlands Stewardship Act provides federal grants to the four Highlands states of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut for land acquisition. However, H.R. 1964 creates an unneeded and unwarranted level of bureaucracy. The legislation creates a federal Office of Highlands Stewardship within the U.S. Department of Agriculture with the authority to approve and dispense land preservation grants for the Highlands region. Further, the Office of Highlands Stewardship is tasked with implementing the findings and strategies of the 1992 study and the 2002 Update, which, as stated earlier, has many flaws. The legislation authorizes an annual authorization of $25 million for land acquisition within the Highlands.
There currently exist several federal programs that can aid local Highlands communities in their efforts on land preservation without the creation of a new federal office. For example, the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program offers states an opportunity to partner with the U.S. Forest Service to identify and help protect environmentally important forests. The U.S. Forest Services’ Land and Water Conservation Fund, which this legislation uses to fund Highlands preservation, provides money to federal, state and local governments to purchase land, water and wetlands. The Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Farmland Protection Program provides funds to help purchase development rights to keep productive farmland in agricultural uses. These federal programs, and others, include the programmatic infrastructure and funding to serve the goals of protecting land in the Highlands without the creation of a new office to administer the program.
Although H.R. 1964 attempts to preserve local zoning control and private property rights, the designation of the Highlands as a national Stewardship Area will serve to grant the federal imprimatur to the Highlands region. With this designation, preservationists and no-growth advocates in the region will be emboldened to seek further limits on land use in the name of “national significance.” Further, the legislation offers no definition of “Stewardship Area” and what federal protection, management or obligation the designation may provide to the area and the citizens who live within the region.
One solution to easing development pressures and threats to natural resources in the Highlands is to examine the federal statutory and regulatory impediments to sensible development and resource protection. Our industry has struggled over the years with myriad overlapping regulations that inhibit responsible development. Rather than create another layer of federal oversight for this region, the Congress should explore ways that the federal government can coordinate its own various land use authorities and its own often contradicting policies that affect the Highlands region. The local communities within the Highlands that desire land preservation would be better served by the streamlining or improved cross-department coordination of the federal requirements and processes that influence local land use plans. With better federal regulatory coordination, state and local governments could better accommodate both development and preservation.
The redevelopment of petroleum-contaminated brownfield sites is one area that the federal government can aid local communities. Unfortunately, current federal law does not provide liability protection for innocent developers who want to develop petroleum brownfield sites. Without liability protection, builders are unwilling to assume the risk to their businesses and, therefore, are deterred from redeveloping petroleum sites. Petroleum brownfield sites, which present excellent redevelopment opportunities, represent approximately half of the 500,000 brownfield sites in the country. By providing statutory or regulatory incentives for redevelopment, brownfields revitalization can ease the development of “green fields” and aid land preservation efforts.
Mr. Chairman, the Highlands Stewardship Act seeks to preserve land in the Highlands by using solutions drawn from debatable conclusions in flawed reports. Without exploring the economic impact that land preservation will have on local Highlands’ economies and housing affordability, the solutions and strategies H.R. 1964 seeks to implement are incomplete and could damage the economic future of the region. While the cause of land preservation is a noble one, the goal of land preservation within the Highlands can be accomplished by existing federal conservation programs without any special “national” designations.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to share the views of the New Jersey Builders Association and the National Association of Home Builders on this important issue. I look forward to any questions you or the members of the committee may have. |