NJ builds almost no affordable housing as rents soar past $2,400

🏠 New Jersey affordable housing crisis deepens as construction lags.

🏠 Just 6.5% of new apartments in the state are fully affordable, study finds

🏠 Towns will need to build rapidly to meet affordable housing mandates

While tens of thousands of affordable homes are built throughout the country each year, a new study finds almost none are going up in New Jersey.

It's a bad outlook for a state where the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is over $2,400, and rising. The bleak findings come from an analysis conducted by RentCafe.com.

Affordable housing construction in New Jersey falls far below national average

Their study found that, between 2020 and 2024, the rest of the nation built nearly 310,000 income-restricted apartments. That was around 12.6% of new construction.

In New Jersey, developers built 60,161 units during the same five-year period. Only 3,901 of those apartments — just 6.5% of them — were considered fully affordable.

In 2024, fewer than 600 affordable apartment units were built in New Jersey, the slowest rate. The rest of the country built more than 90,000 of them.

It's a huge contrast against the massive metropolitan hub across the Hudson River. In New York City, around 32% of new construction is fully affordable. The Concrete Jungle is the second-largest builder of these apartments nationwide.

New construction near a Wawa in Ewing on Nov. 24, 2025. (Rick Rickman/Townsquare Media NJ)

Mount Laurel Doctrine mandates “fair share” affordable housing

New Jersey towns will need to build a lot faster if they want to keep up with the requirements under the Mount Laurel Doctrine, which mandates that each community must allow for its "fair share" of affordable housing by 2035.

Paramus, Secaucus, and Wayne must each approve 1,000 units of affordable housing to meet their obligations. Over 30 cities and towns are required to build more than 500 affordable apartments within the next 10 years.

Montvale is required to build 365 affordable apartments. Mike Ghassali, the mayor of the town of just 3,000 homes, led a challenge against the affordable housing mandates. He said the rules benefit developers, not residents.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request for emergency action from Ghassali's group. As it stands, these are the New Jersey towns that must build the most affordable housing.

NJ towns that need to build the most affordable housing

These 33 municipalities have the greatest number of affordable housing units that should be built, according to calculations by the Department of Community Affairs.

The "present need" refers to existing but deficient housing occupied by low- and moderate-income households. "Prospective need" refers to the housing that would have to be built in the next 10 years to accommodate the estimated growth of low- and moderate-income households. The state used a formula that considers a municipality's income and land capacity.

The current housing and population counts are from the 2020 Census.

Gallery Credit: New Jersey 101.5

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