As expected, the Township Council passed a resolution that would allow individual homeowners in the Walden Woods development to decide whether they want to make the switch to market-rate values for their homes and pay the accompanying taxes.
The resolution, drafted by Planning attorney Gerald Muller, was passed a week after the council decided to stick with Muller’s resolution over one proposed by two of the homeowners in the development.
Last month the homeowners challenged the resolution, which was hailed as a “win-win” solution. The resolution allows individual homeowners to decide their fate: whether they want to switch to market-rate values for the their properties or maintain the 30-year affordable housing restrictions.
The township’s resolution would allow the administration to work with the 16 homeowners by sending them letters and asking them to decide how they want to proceed.
The township would proceed with each homeowner individually, and those homeowners who opt to have their homes assessed at market rate will have to pay taxes associated with that market rate. Those who wish to continue being considered affordable would continue for the full 30 years, which is 20 more years from now. That will be binding.
The resolutions come after a nearly two-year process of battling to have affordable housing restrictions removed from their property deeds.
The Walden Woods residents received a letter from the state Council on Affordable Housing stating it would give West Windsor Township the full number of credits for the homes, but grant the residents 10-year — as opposed to 30-year — affordable housing restrictions, making them eligible now to receive market value for their homes.
Walden Woods, on Bear Brook Road, was created in the 1990s through the Operation Bootstrap Program, which was part of the United States Department of Agriculture Mutual Self-Help Housing Program. The program accepted “sweat equity” in lieu of a down payment, eliminating the primary impediment to home ownership for low-income families, up-front cash.
