New Jersey Equity

Paul Scully, Executive Director of New Jersey Regional Coalition spoke at Ethical Culture today. He does a great overview of the relation between how some western counties of New Jersey are getting more and more businesses/jobs, less taxes, less affordable housing, and fewer poor people. And how the inner cities have fewer jobs, a higher tax rate (although the low value of houses means not necessarily more tax dollars paid), more affordable housing, including getting paid to take far western cities' Mount Laurel obligations, and, of course, many many poor people. Middle income, inner ring suburbs like South Orange-Maplewood get squeezed on taxes, on poor people looking for good schools, etc. etc. His solutions include rationalizing tax support for schools, more organizations like the Coalition, and organize organize organize-- especially for inner ring suburbs to figure out who their real allies are.