SEA ISLE CITY – The City Council has endorsed a new housing element and fair share plan as adopted by the Planning Board, bringing Sea Isle into compliance with state rules regarding New Jersey’s newly reformed affordable housing system.

Sea Isle’s housing obligation, combining earlier and prospective need, is 25 living units. The council accepted that obligation in January. Following agreement on the obligation, state rules require a housing element and fair share plan that explains how the municipality expects to meet its obligation. It was that document that was developed by the Planning Board and endorsed by the council on June 10.

The bottom line, as the plan makes clear, is that “there are limited opportunities to create affordable housing in the city given the scarcity of vacant or underutilized parcels.”

Given that lack of vacant land, the municipality’s plan identifies a “realistic development potential” of seven units and an unmet need of 18, equaling the Department of Community Affairs number of 25. The city’s unmet need from previous affordable housing rounds is 366, to which the 18 will be added.

The unmet need remains as an obligation should the availability of land change, as happened in Stone Harbor when a religious retreat house was demolished, creating open space for a subdivision of 13 homes. That triggered an obligation for Stone Harbor for three affordable living units given the borough’s 20% set-aside for affordable housing. A similar unexpected availability of land in Sea Isle would trigger the need for affordable units, given the city’s unmet quota.

The city’s plan notes that Sea Isle has three separate ordinances to address its affordable unit obligations, “none of which have yielded any new units,” the plan says. The three are a mandatory set-aside for any development of five or more multifamily units, an overlay zone at the city’s marina, and a zone for 100% age-restricted affordable housing units.

The state’s former process for affordable housing, run by the courts, was modified in March 2024 when Gov. Phil Murphy signed new legislation.

The legislation replaced the defunct Council on Affordable Housing and established a new framework for determining and meeting affordable housing obligations. The Department of Community Affairs now calculates municipal low- and moderate-income housing obligations.

The state has now embarked on its fourth round of municipal affordable housing obligations, covering the period 2025 to 2035. DCA provided each municipality with its calculated present need, the housing obligation from prior rounds, and its new prospective need for the fourth round.

Contact the reporter, Vince Conti, at vconti@cmcherald.com.