Housing Blogs & Reports
Report Release: Examining Low- and Moderate-Income Community Solar Program and Energy Justice in New Jersey: An AI-Based Crowdsourcing Study
Read Report By Sania Murtuza, Tai Vu, Biplav Pokhrel, and Yao Sun, Ph.D. This research project investigated the effectiveness of low- and moderate-income (LMI) community solar programs in New Jersey, where we focused [...]
Identifying and Examining Corporate Home Ownership Throughout New Jersey
By Eric Seymour Corporate housing investors have been the subject of much reporting and even recent legislation aimed at curbing corporations from crowding out homebuyers. In October, U.S. Representatives Ro Khanna, Katie Porter, and [...]
Equity and Environmental Justice in Regional Flood Mobility Programs
By Melissa Tier New Jersey’s Climate Change Resilience Strategy calls on the state and local governments to “support and incentivize movement to safer areas” for “populations in areas subject to repetitive flooding or inundation,” [...]
Unlocking Energy Efficiency: A Data-Driven Exploration of PACE Bond Issuance in California
By Ruth Winecoff This is the second in a series describing ongoing research on Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). PACE, which uses local governments’ ability to borrow to pay the upfront costs of energy [...]
Nursing Home Quality in New Jersey: Trends, Disparities, and the Path Forward
By Miyeon Song, Ph.D., Seungho An, Ph.D., and Jinah Yoo The Role of Nursing Homes in New Jersey's Long-Term Care System As New Jersey's aging population grows, nursing homes have become a vital part [...]
Making Sense of New Jersey Parcel Data to Identify Trends in Corporate Ownership of Housing
By Eric Seymour This second blog on our team’s research on corporate investor ownership of residential properties in New Jersey addresses the methods used and the techniques developed so far. While New Jersey provides a [...]
Is Property Assessed Clean Energy a White Windfall in Urban Neighborhoods?
By Ruth Winecoff. This is the first in a series of blogs regarding an ongoing clean energy research project generously supported by the New Jersey State Policy Lab. This project focuses on Property Assessed Clean Energy [...]
Investigating Corporate Ownership of Housing in New Jersey
By Eric Seymour Corporate ownership of housing has been on the rise in the U.S. over the past decade, raising concerns about the impacts of this shift for both renters and would-be homebuyers. This [...]
Examining Low-Income Community Solar Program and Energy Justice in New Jersey: An AI-Based Crowdsourcing Study
By Sania Murtuza, Vibha Venkataraman, Tai Vu, & Yao Sun, Ph.D. Guided by the theoretical and practical frameworks from the literature, the research team led efforts to specify neighborhoods in New Jersey [...]
Sustainable Assisted Living Programs in New Jersey
By Ayse Akincigil. Many seniors in publicly subsidized housing need support services like chronic condition monitoring, medication management, and assistance with certain activities of living. Without such help, they risk [...]
Examining Low-Income Community Solar Program and Energy Justice in New Jersey: An AI-Based Crowdsourcing Study
By Yao Sun, Ph.D., Avanish Kulkarni, & Sania Murtuza. As the global emphasis on sustainability grows everyday— it is crucial to assess different alternatives for energy that does not require the burning of fossil fuels and nonrenewable energies in general [...]
Examining Low-Income Community Solar Program and Energy Justice in New Jersey: An AI-based Crowdsourcing Study
By Yao Sun. The 2019 New Jersey Energy Master Plan: Pathway to 2050 mentioned that the state’s Clean Energy Act commitments include, “Developing a community solar program that allows more state residents to benefit from solar energy [...]
New Jersey Ranks First in Income, but Housing Costs Take a Hefty Share Especially for those with Lower Incomes
By William Irving. Data released earlier this month from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey show that New Jersey now tops the list of states with the highest incomes in the country [...]
New Jersey State Policy Lab Summer Internship Summit
The New Jersey State Policy Lab held the 2023 Summer Internship presentations at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy on August 17, 2023. The eight summer interns each presented [...]
Property Tax Rates and Quality of K-12 Education in New Jersey Communities
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 [...]
Introducing the New Jersey MOD IV Historical Database
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 [...]
Heat or Eat? The Low-Income Home Energy Distribution Program (LIHEAP) and Its Implications for New Jersey
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 [...]
Report Release: Equitable Property Acquisitions to Enhance Climate Resilience
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 [...]
Report Release: Does the Decision to Allow Local Cannabis-Related Businesses Impact Home Sale Prices?
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 [...]
Housing Affordability in New Jersey, 2010-2020
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 Revival of Urban Enterprise Zones in New Jersey
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 [...]
New Jersey’s Single-Family Housing Markets by County 2021
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 [...]
Report Release: The New Jersey Housing Crisis in a COVID Era
By 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 [...]
Our First Report: Encouraging Activation of Vacant Commercial Properties
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 [...]
Has New Jersey’s Housing Market Peaked? A New Year’s Assessment
By Michael L. Lahr, Director of Rutgers Economic Research Service (R/ECON™) What is the status of New Jersey housing markets? The bottom line has been more or less the same since June 2020: double-digit price [...]
A Primer on Housing Markets with a Bird’s Eye View on New Jersey’s
By Michael L. Lahr, R/ECON™ Housing markets are not just geographically separated, they are socially stratified too (in combination the two generate what is termed, “housing market segmentation”). Properties in a region can differ radically [...]
Vacant Commercial Property in New Jersey: Causes and Solutions
Michael S. Hayes and Pengju Zhang The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated changes in investment decisions throughout the economy. For example, the growth in virtual work and e-commerce has likely negatively impacted the demand for some [...]
The New Jersey Housing Crisis in a COVID Era – Project Update
Samantha Roth Samantha Roth is a Master of Public Administration Student at the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark. She is a research assistant with support from the New Jersey Policy Lab [...]
The NJ Housing Crisis in a COVID-Era: Mapping Strategic Processes
Kyle Farmbry Among the many challenges brought by COVID-19, the pandemic is exposing the vast scope of our housing affordability crisis. This crisis has been brewing for some time, and policy responses such as moratoria [...]