Southern Burlington County N.A.A.C.P. v. Township of Mount Laurel

Facts

Mount Laurel was a flat township of 22 square miles in Burlington County. It had been rural, with 2817 people in 1950, but grew to 11,221 people by 1970. Its zoning ordinance, adopted in 1964, zoned 29.2% of the land, 4,121 acres, for industry, yet only about 100 acres had been developed industrially by the time of trial. The four residential zones allowed only single-family detached houses, one per lot. Apartments (except on farms for agricultural workers), townhouses and mobile homes were barred under the general ordinance. Minimum lot sizes ran from 9,375 square feet to about half an acre, and minimum floor areas were 1,100 square feet for one-story houses and 1,300 for taller ones. The township did approve planned unit developments (projects negotiated one by one between developer and township) that included apartments. But those were priced for middle and upper income residents, sharply limited bedrooms, and made developers pay school costs for excess children. In 1968 a private effort to build subsidized housing in the poor Springville section was answered with a resolution requiring compliance with all applicable ordinances, which meant single-family houses on 20,000 square foot lots. The court found the township acted to keep local property taxes down. Township counsel said the scheme was not adopted to exclude anyone because of race, origin or believed social incompatibility, and the court accepted that. Plaintiffs were low and moderate income people, including minority group poor, and organizations.

Issues

1. May a developing municipality like Mount Laurel, through its land use regulations, make it physically and economically impossible to provide low and moderate income housing and so exclude people because of their limited income and resources?
2. Can a developing municipality justify limiting types of housing, or zoning heavily for industry, on the ground that doing so protects its local tax rate under New Jersey's property tax system?
3. How far does the municipality's obligation reach, and what remedy is proper: invalidating the whole ordinance and ordering a court-supervised plan, or leaving the township to amend first?

Holding

Mount Laurel's ordinance, which allowed essentially only single-family detached houses, imposed large lot and floor size minimums, and zoned excessive land for industry, was presumptively contrary to the general welfare. The township's fiscal and environmental reasons did not justify it, so the ordinance was invalid in those particulars and had to be amended. The township must afford the opportunity for low and moderate income housing at least to the extent of its fair share of the present and prospective regional need.