Most students at PHS know that New Jersey is not an easy place to buy a home, but what they might not know is that expensive housing doesn’t just make it harder to buy a house: it raises the costs of everything from insurance to ice cream. Affordable housing should be important to all of us, yet New Jersey’s housing prices still continue to rise. To understand why we lack affordable housing, New Jersey has to examine its past.

About 60 years ago, Mount Laurel officials began demolishing the “substandard” homes of lower income residents. In reply, the residents submitted a proposal to build affordable housing to replace the demolished homes. Unfortunately, an official shot the proposal down, responding: “If you people can’t afford to live in our town, then you’ll just have to leave.”

The residents sued the township. Three state Supreme Court cases later, the New Jersey Supreme Court established that all New Jersey municipalities have an obligation under the New Jersey Constitution to provide low-income and moderate-income housing, and the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) was created through the Fair Housing Act. Yet, years later, New Jersey home prices have risen to the point where the state has the ninth highest average home price in the entire country. To address this housing crisis, Governor Phil Murphy passed the bill known as A-40/S-50 this March. But how did we get to the point where a second bill is necessary?

Put simply, the Fair Housing Act became a joke. Every six years, the COAH underwent rounds of rulemaking, intended to update its formula to calculate township affordable housing obligations. However, due to incessant legal challenges, the COAH became unable to pass any reforms at all, which culminated in Governor Chris Christie attempting to abolish COAH. As a result, by 2015, the COAH was “declared moribund” by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Throughout this all, wealthy townships ignored the COAH by engaging in endless legal disputes and utilizing loopholes to shift their responsibilities to other towns.

This matters for everyone who lives in New Jersey. Fewer houses and higher demand lead to higher property values. As housing prices increase, so too do insurance premiums and property taxes. With people priced out of buying houses, landlords raise rents to take advantage of increased demand for shorter-term housing. When a state becomes more expensive to live in, businesses raise prices to pay higher loan fees and rents. Finally, fewer people seek to migrate to expensive states, resulting in reduced commerce and tax revenue. A-40/S-50 aims to address these issues by replacing the COAH with a new framework to calculate township affordable housing requirements, as well as provide support for Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) programs. PILOT programs allow affordable housing to be constructed without putting the cost of construction on taxpayers by reducing taxes on developers and allowing the construction of new marketrate housing. PILOT programs are not perfect, since they don’t provide funding to the school board. Yet not every housing development even utilizes PILOTs, and marketrate housing is still crucial to addressing the issue of housing supply.

Despite this, the primary reason that opponents of COAH cite is cost. According to Senator O’Scanlon, the bill “mandates levels of affordable housing that communities cannot sustain.” Additionally, PILOT projects are profitable for developers. However, part of the reason developers have made so much money is because of lacking auditary standards, which resulted from a COAH paralyzed by constant lawsuits.

Without sufficient audits, developers were able to consistently exploit legal loopholes in their favor. For example, developers could put together the expenses of multiple projects to overstate expenses, thus lowering reported profits to underpaythe city for taxes. This is an issue that A-40/S-50 aims to fix by standardizing the process of constructing affordable housing.

It’s also hypocritical for opponents of A-40/S-50 to cite cost as an issue after spending millions in lawsuits to challenge COAH regulations. Due to these lawsuits, New Jersey is estimated to be 200,000 homes short of meeting basic affordable housing requirements. The actual issue at stake is NIMBYism. The acronym, which stands for “Not In My Backyard,” is a term commonly applied to people who oppose affordable housing out of misconceptions or fear. NIMBYs often oppose change due to perceived risks of crime, strained infrastructure, lowered property values, and changing community character. While many local officials have avoided making statements along these lines, it’s difficult to avoid seeing signs of its influence. The arguments provided against affordable housing are flawed and simply can’t explain the fifty years lawmakers have spent viciously fighting the results of Mount Laurel. However, countless studies have shown that those fears rarely come to pass. For example, a study conducted by Princeton University on Mount Laurel’s affordable housing found that the town’s crime rates, property values, and taxes were similar to the surrounding suburbs, while “the lives of the poor and working-class families who moved there transformed.” Many neighbors were even unaware that affordable housing existed in that area. Despite this, the movement still has strong roots in Princeton itself.

> The arguments provided against affordable housing are flawed.

In 2022, the Princeton Coalition for Responsible Development was formed to fight against an affordable housing development on the land of the Princeton Theological Seminary, on the grounds that it would increase traffic. PCRD founder Jo Butler later elaborated with the words, “every day people are at Einstein’s house…then they want to know the way to Oppenheimer’s house. It’s a big draw and we’re going to ruin it. So, does that make me a NIMBY? I guess.”

Ruin it? How? Is Butler still terrified the development might look ugly, despite the project utilizing top of-the-line materials to blend with the surrounding neighborhood? Does Butler believe evil developers seek to bulldoze Einstein’s house? Will increased traffic somehow injure Princeton’s historical value? Or is Butler still afraid of the people who depend on affordable housing? Whatever the case, there’s no adequate way to justify her statement. Though the group has made statements on seeking common ground, its actions directly contradict this. When they were told they couldn’t sue Princeton’s mayor over the housing plan, the group “refused to amend their case” without actually giving a reason why. Additionally, the group has taken issue with nearly every affordable housing development in Princeton and also attempted to halt construction of affordable housing that was agreed upon even before Princeton’s housing plan was created.

The easiest way to take action? Simply learn more about affordable housing. Opponents to affordable housing often rely on vague fear-inducing statements to generate misconceptions. Students should confirm the validity of rumors before spreading them, and research the ways affordable housing has succeeded and failed. Students also have exclusive access to a crucial audience; their parents. Murphy’s bill is New Jersey’s second chance to address the cost of living, and families shouldn’t let local officials use their taxpayer dollars to fight it. By simply engaging in dialogue, students can shine a spotlight on New Jersey’s housing crisis.

Rising housing costs hurt New Jersey

   Through increasing social disagreement in our country, many parents have joined together in an attempt to protect their children from ideas or courses of study that they deem harmful. In order to protect their children from these ideas — whether scientific, medical, or historical — parents lobby and protest so that their children can opt out of certain lessons. 
   It’s easy to think of opting-out of controversial content as something that happens far away from the progressive halls of PHS. However, recently, the PPS district has had its own challenges with parental demands to opt-out. In September, Project Veritas (a conservative media organization) released an undercover video of a HiTOPS (an LGBTQ+ non-profit) employee on YouTube. In the video, the employee explained that instead of educating students about LGBTQ+ issues in an opt-outable sex-ed class, the organization had been teaching about it in mandatory Pathways to Racial Literacy classes. As a result, this January, a small group of parents held a protest at Princeton Middle School against the continued inclusion of HiTOPS in the mandatory school curriculum. 
   “[PPS] has had requests in the past to opt-out of [Pathways to] Racial Literacy, [a] graduation requirement, [but] per the state guidelines it’s not opt-outable,” said Kimberly Tew, Assistant  Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction.             
   Those who support opting out generally subscribe to the philosophy known as “parents’ rights.” This principle maintains that parents should have greater control of their child’s experience in public schools. In some cases, this may even mean outright changes to the entire curriculum. In 2023, the attorney general in Indiana passed the Parents’ Bill of Rights with the aim of changing the curriculum to ensure that it “accurately reflects the values of Indiana families.” 
   The justification for this is that parents know what’s good for their children better than educators. These claims should not be immediately dismissed. Parents, after all, spend a lot of time with their children and would be able to notice the emotional needs of their children. However, mental health and education are entirely different. Teachers and school administrators have spent their careers devoted to the intellectual and educational experience of young adults, whereas parents often see things only through the eyes of their own children, making teachers generally more in tune with the intellectual and social needs of students. 
   In addition to a justification for involvement in education, for opting-out to actually happen, parents must take issue with the school curriculum. Of course, parents are entitled to their own opinions about what is right. However, allowing a student to study something does not mean they will be forced to endorse it. In a school district as accommodating as Princeton’s, students who disagree with the perspective of the educator have a chance to voice their disagreement and express their reasoning. At PHS, students are likely to encounter a much more forgiving and understanding audience than if they were to wait to discuss their ideas until entering our intensely partisan society. In turn, students who had previously agreed with the position of the educator are introduced to another perspective — their world view expands, and they learn that the issue at hand is not one sided. 
   In the end, opting-out depends on a logic that is similar to censorship, as if there are certain ideas or subjects that are so dangerous that they must be deemed out of bounds entirely. But this is hardly the case; we should be exposed to all kinds of ideas — both good and bad — just like the ideas we will eventually be exposed to when we leave the safety of the classroom.     
   Parents, though, still have a crucial role to play in this process of education. Rather than protect their children from “dangerous” ideas, they should provide their children with the analytical tools to form their own interpretation. 

Opt out, or cop-out?

   Imagine you’re in a crowd of people shouting demands at a politician. You’ve got a loud voice, so you’re confident that you can be heard. Unfortunately, there are five thousand other screaming people in the same crowd as you. And everyone is getting drowned out by a guy who bought a top-tier surround-sound speaker system and rented that balcony above the politician two weeks ago. This is representative of current American politics, and how it currently drowns out the voices of the people.
   There’s one often overlooked requirement to hold office in the United States: money. According to OpenSecrets.org, the amount of money each House Representative spent to win office in 2022 was around $2.79 million, and the amount of money every Senator spent to win office in 2022 was around $26.53 million. It is clear that elected officials are reliant on money, and it is far more efficient for them to turn towards a small number of wealthy individuals than to seek donations from thousands of average voters. The process of doing so is often covered under the term lobbying. 
   Lobbying is defined by Britannica as “any attempt by individuals or private interest groups to influence the decisions of government.” In the United States, this comes in the form of “public” campaigns undertaken to pressure politicians into specific policy decisions. The term is broad. It covers the practice of directly speaking to politicians, signing petitions, and funding research. However, the most common and influential method used in lobbying is donating large sums of money to political campaigns. There’s a reason that terms differentiating different forms of lobbying do not exist. It makes it far easier to confuse the public about what lobbying actually is.
   The only problem is, lobbying isn’t supposed to work like that. There are set limits on how much individuals or corporations can donate each year to campaigns. Those limits can be conveniently circumvented by exploiting several loopholes in the law, especially those inherent to PACs. 
   The PAC, or Political Action Committee, is the main vehicle politicians use to accept campaign contributions. A PAC, according to OpenSecrets.org, is “a political committee that raises and spends money to elect or defeat candidates.” Federal law allows for two kinds of PACs: Connected and Non-Connected. Judicial decisions have allowed for a third kind of PAC known as “independent expenditure-only committees,” otherwise known as “Super PACs.”    
   A Super PAC can accept unlimited amounts of money, provided they don’t use those funds to “make contributions, whether direct, in-kind or via coordinated communications, to federal candidates or committees” as per the Federal Election Commission’s regulations. This means that candidates are barred from telling Super PACs how to spend their money. However, there are numerous legal loopholes around this restriction. 
   Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, created a Super PAC for the sole purpose of exposing these inherent loopholes. During a conversation with the president of his PAC, Colbert pointed out that while he “[couldn’t] tell him [what to do]” directly, he could easily convey his preferences to the PAC through indirect means, such as publicly expressing his views on television. The other major requirement, according to the Campaign Legal Center, is that Super PACs must “[report] their fundraising [and spending] to the Federal Election Commission.” However, the Campaign Legal Center also notes that Super PACs can hide their donors by simply “only [reporting] contributions from secretly-funded ‘dark money’ nonprofits, which themselves keep their donors hidden from the public.” Additionally, politicians can easily transfer money from Super PACs back to themselves. According to Politico’s coverage of Colbert’s Super PAC, Colbert’s lawyer explained that Colbert “could secretly steal the remaining $800,000 in his super PAC by creating an anonymous 501(c)4 and using an IRS loophole.” 
   Colbert’s experiment proves that politicians are able to accept unlimited amounts of money, not disclose its origins, and then hide it from the IRS. Many of these funds are used in lobbying processes, which have proven to be effective in creating change in favor of its patrons. For example, Politico reported in 2021 that Amazon lobbied Congress to preserve a prized tax break that has helped it lower its corporate tax bill. The company hired the tax lobbyist Joshua Odintz, a former Democratic congressional aide and veteran of the Obama administration, to lobby on the section of the tax code dealing with the research and development tax deduction. Although they were joined by other companies such as Intel and the National Association of Manufacturers for their attempt in 2021, Amazon’s own efforts to curb these tax bills have been happening for years, and have successfully pushed back the repeal of the tax break. According to Statista, corporations spent a total of $4.09 billion on lobbying in 2022 alone. Of course, that’s only the reported figure. Nothing stops a corporation from donating to a shell nonprofit organization, which can then transfer money over to a PAC. 
   The dozens of student-created clubs at PHS are a clear sign that students want to create change that lasts. The government is meant to be the tool for people to create that change. Attempting to create change with a corrupt government is like trying to fix a car with a broken wrench. As we become the new generation of civically active citizens, it is crucial to understand the intricacies of our current political space and where it is currently failing us.

Political bribery is hidden in plain sight

On October 22, the PHS community received an email from the Board of Education stating that Dr. Carol Kelley would be resigning from her role as PPS Superintendent following a nine-month leave of absence. In a later email to parents and guardians, Kelley offered her own words of explanation.

“This week, after much consideration, I made the difficult decision to resign as Superintendent of Princeton Public Schools. For personal and professional reasons, I must take some time to reset and recenter myself so I can later return to public education and continue to positively impact students,” Kelley wrote in an email.

Following Kelley’s announcement, Rebecca Gold stepped in to serve as Acting Superintendent and Dr. Kathleen Foster was appointed as Interim Superintendent ten days later.

Gold and Foster are both long-time administrators, in Princeton and elsewhere. Gold served for more than 25 years in Lawrence Township, serving in various leadership positions, such as the Director of Personnel. She currently serves as the Interim Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources in PPS. The temporary role of Acting Superintendent added to her current responsibilities.

When asked to describe the role of Gold and the Interim Superintendent, Dafna Kendal, President of the Board of Education, said that it was important to have someone to “sign the checks,” or in other words, act as a formal authority in the district decisions made by the administrative team.

“The board wants someone in charge; even though we have a really strong administrative team, we just want that one person,” Kendal said.

Deeply familiar with Princeton’s educational landscape, Foster most recently served as the Interim Principal for Princeton High School following the dismissal of Frank Chmiel. Prior to that, she held a longstanding administrative position in Robbinsville before joining the PPS district in December 2021 as the Interim Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction. On November 13, the board approved her appointment as Interim Superintendent, which is expected to last for the rest of Kelley’s contractual term. 

According to Foster’s contract, the Board wants to “enhance administrative stability, financial security, and continuity within the schools while the Superintendent is on a leave of absence.”

Rashone Johnson, the assistant principal at PHS, believes that PHS is used to these types of changes and can adapt well to them.

“[The] high school administration is still going to do everything in our power to make sure that things still run smoothly for all of our students and staff,” Johnson said.

As PPS changes administrators, students and staff have found ways to continue to achieve the goals of the district, namely quality education. Kendal agreed that students and staff are at the core of the district.

“I think what makes our district great is our teaching staff. And, I know there have been a lot of administrative changes … [but] our teachers just continue doing their jobs and focus on teaching and learning. So while I think it’s important who we have as a leader of the district, I think we’re led by … [what is happening] in our buildings,” Kendal said.

The Tower

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The Tower