Community Leaders Discuss the Challenges and Opportunities Facing South Orange and Maplewood

For nearly 30 years, the Community Coalition on Race has understood a simple truth: if we care about integration, inclusion, and opportunity, we must pay attention to housing.

That idea framed the Coalition's recent Town Hall on Housing and Development, where South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum and Maplewood Mayor Vic DeLuca joined members of the Coalition's Residential Committee for an in-depth conversation about one of the most pressing issues facing the two communities: how to preserve racial, economic, and generational diversity at a time when housing costs continue to rise.

The discussion explored the complex intersection of affordable housing, redevelopment, zoning, transportation, and community planning—issues that affect not only who can afford to live in South Orange and Maplewood today, but whether future generations will continue to experience these communities as places where people from different races, backgrounds, and income levels can live, learn, and thrive together.

Housing Has Always Been Central to Integration

Opening the program, the Coalition's Executive Director Nancy Gagnier reminded attendees that residential integration has never happened by accident.

New Jersey remains both one of the nation's most expensive housing markets and one of its most racially segregated states. Historic policies—including redlining, restrictive covenants, discriminatory lending, urban renewal, steering, and exclusionary zoning—created patterns of segregation whose effects continue to shape communities today.

Over the past seventy years, New Jersey has attempted to address these inequities through landmark legislation and court decisions, from the expansion of the state's Law Against Discrimination into housing, to the Mount Laurel Doctrine, the Fair Housing Act, the repeal of Regional Contribution Agreements, and continuing affordable housing obligations.

Yet despite decades of reforms, significant disparities remain. Homeownership—the primary source of wealth creation for most American families—continues to reflect profound racial inequities. In Essex County, approximately 68 percent of White households own their homes, compared with roughly 28 percent of Black households and 34 percent of Latino households. Meanwhile, median home prices approaching or exceeding one million dollars in both South Orange and Maplewood present growing challenges for first-time homebuyers, young families, seniors, and middle-income workers.

These realities, she emphasized, make housing policy inseparable from its mission of sustaining an integrated and inclusive community. Luis Estrella, co-chair of the Coalition's Residential Committee, then moderated a conversation with the towns' mayors about housing, affordability, and how both municipalities are responding.

Meeting Affordable Housing Obligations

Mayor Sheena Collum explained how South Orange has worked for decades to meet its affordable housing obligations through redevelopment planning and partnerships with developers. She described the Township's inclusionary housing policies, noting that qualifying developments now dedicate 20 percent of units as deed-restricted affordable housing—an increase from the previous 15 percent requirement.

She stressed that affordable housing is both a legal obligation and a community responsibility. While residents often focus on the visible impacts of new development, municipalities must simultaneously navigate state mandates, land use regulations, infrastructure constraints, financing challenges, and neighborhood concerns.

Mayor Vic DeLuca expanded the discussion beyond the local level, describing New Jersey's housing shortage as one of the central drivers of rising housing costs. Increasing the overall supply of homes, he argued, is essential if communities hope to improve affordability.

He also highlighted state initiatives designed to encourage redevelopment of underutilized commercial properties, including vacant shopping malls, while noting that broader structural changes at both the state and federal levels will be necessary to address long-term housing needs.

Preserving Diversity as Housing Costs Rise

Perhaps the strongest theme of the evening was the relationship between housing affordability and community diversity.

Mayor DeLuca expressed concern that rapidly increasing home prices and rents threaten the racial and economic diversity that has long distinguished Maplewood. Communities cannot remain welcoming, he suggested, if teachers, first responders, young adults, seniors, and longtime residents can no longer afford to remain.

Mayor Collum echoed those concerns while emphasizing the difficult balancing act facing local governments. Municipal leaders must fulfill affordable housing obligations while preserving neighborhood character, investing in infrastructure, and responding to residents' concerns about traffic, parking, schools, and quality of life.

Both mayors agreed that these challenges extend beyond municipal boundaries and require regional cooperation as well as continued state support.

Looking Beyond Traditional Housing

The discussion also explored what planners often call the "missing middle"—housing options such as duplexes, triplexes, cottage courts, and accessory dwelling units that provide alternatives between single-family homes and large apartment buildings.

Both mayors acknowledged that expanding these options will require changes to longstanding zoning practices.

Mayor Collum pointed to South Orange's 2021 Master Plan, which encourages a broader mix of housing in carefully identified transitional areas while preserving established neighborhoods. She also discussed workforce housing initiatives, including plans to create housing opportunities for educators serving the South Orange-Maplewood School District.

Mayor DeLuca noted that Maplewood continues to explore accessory dwelling units, supportive housing, senior housing, and homeownership programs while recognizing that construction costs and local tax structures present significant barriers to expanding these options.

Community Voices Matter

Audience members raised thoughtful questions about development, adaptive reuse of commercial properties, the future of houses of worship, transit-oriented development, and ways residents can become more engaged in planning decisions.

One participant suggested that residents who support thoughtfully planned development should become as active in public hearings as those who oppose projects.

Mayor Collum agreed, emphasizing that successful redevelopment depends on meaningful community engagement from the earliest stages of planning. She described South Orange's use of advisory groups and public outreach to ensure that residents help shape projects before formal approvals occur.

Throughout the evening, both mayors stressed that planning is most successful when communities focus not only on what they hope to preserve, but also on what they hope to create.

The Coalition's Continuing Role

The Coalition concluded by reaffirming its longstanding role in advancing residential integration—not by building housing or writing zoning ordinances, but by helping residents understand how housing decisions shape opportunity, equity, and inclusion.

Through initiatives such as ChooseSOMA.com, affirmative marketing, the Wealth Gap Equalizer Loan Program, realtor education, advocacy for fair housing, and Roadmap to Homeownership workshops, the Coalition continues to ask the same question it has asked for nearly three decades:

How can housing decisions help ensure that South Orange and Maplewood remain communities where people of different races, backgrounds, and income levels can truly belong and thrive?

The conversation demonstrated that there are no easy answers. Yet it also reinforced that preserving the diversity both communities value will require thoughtful planning, informed civic engagement, and a continued commitment to making housing accessible for future generations.

Below is the opening presentation from the Coalition:

Below is an overview of development in South Orange: