by James Barnett New Jersey is consistent in featuring at the top of the ranks for two different variables: effective real estate property tax rates and quality of K-12 education services.[1][2] These, unsurprisingly to most who reside here, are not unrelated in the slightest. Each of New Jersey’s whopping 599 school districts is funded to [...]
By Marc Pfeiffer and Lucas Marxen The NJ MOD IV Historical Database is an online, searchable database of New Jersey MOD IV parcel information data sets from 1989 to 2022. Providing land parcel and property ownership data, the MOD IV database consists of more than 93 million records spanning 33 years. After an extended beta [...]
By Josephine O'Grady. The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance program (LIHEAP) is a federal block grant program that assists low-income families with the cost of paying their utility bills in areas including extreme heat and cold, household revisions to improve energy efficiency [...]
With support from the New Jersey State Policy Lab, the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center Climate Corps conducted research to better understand how flood buyback and managed retreat programs are organized and administered nationwide. Today, we are releasing the report, Leading Practices for Proactive & Equitable Property Acquisitions to Enhance Climate Resilience: A Report [...]
by Michael S. Hayes, Associate Professor, Rutgers University-Camden and Prakash Kandel, Ph.D. Student, Rutgers University-Camden During the 2020 general election, New Jersey voters approved a ballot question to amend the state constitution to allow residents 21 years or older to possess and consume cannabis products. By the summer of 2021, the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory [...]
by Maia de la Calle. Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) Housing affordability and ownership accessibility The main expense incurred by New Jersey’s residents is shelter or housing. As of 2019, New Jersey ranked third in the country for median monthly housing costs, after California and Hawaii.[1] In that same year, the median gross rent for [...]
By Adam Scavette Last summer, then acting New Jersey Governor Sheila Oliver signed legislation to devote $42.5 million toward restoring the state’s Urban Enterprise Zones (UEZ) to full operation for fiscal year 2022. In this piece, I discuss the history and performance of UEZs and opportunities to increase their effectiveness. The UEZ program is designed [...]
Naheed Azhar and Michael L. Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/Econ™) As the count of listings and asking prices flattened,[i] realtors and creditors predicted a rise in foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies as people were laid off and furloughed and as many small businesses failed.[ii] But things did not roll out as feared for housing markets. [...]
Katharine Nelson Affordable housing is increasingly scarce within the United States, and COVID-19 has dramatically exacerbated the simmering crisis in affordable housing. In New Jersey, the risk of eviction is greater than across the country, as 393,000 households are delinquent on their rent, (22.3% of households in renter-occupied housing units in New Jersey as compared [...]
The New Jersey State Policy Lab is publishing our first report, Vacant Commercial Property in New Jersey: Causes and Solutions, written by Michael Hayes and Pengju Zhang. The economic recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an increase in vacant and under-occupied commercial property across New Jersey. This increase is expected to put [...]
