Gov. Sherrill Signs Executive Order on Affordable Housing

Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed an executive order Monday directing state agencies to develop a comprehensive affordable housing strategy by the end of September, bringing a “Jeopardy!” champion along to make the case.

Sherrill unveiled the plan before a packed crowd of housing advocates at the Statehouse in Trenton on April 27, putting the weight of her office behind an issue that has squeezed New Jersey residents for years. The order tasks Kellie Doucette, the state’s chief operating officer, with standing up a housing governing council to inventory vacant or underused state-owned properties where housing could be built, identify regulations that block affordable housing development, and propose rule changes, legislation, and other solutions to expand housing production statewide.

“For years, I’ve heard the same story again and again across our state,” Sherrill said. “‘Mikie, it’s getting too expensive. I don’t know how I’m going to afford to stay here.’ And we’ve seen it, rising utility costs and healthcare costs, childcare costs, transit costs, grocery bills, and the biggest of all, housing. We just aren’t going to make New Jersey more affordable if we don’t make housing more affordable.”

The numbers back her up. Housing costs have soared by 60% in parts of the state over the past five years. More than a third of New Jerseyans spend over a third of their income on housing, according to Sherrill’s executive order. The median home price in New Jersey sits above $500,000. Median monthly rent tops $1,800 statewide, with average rents breaking $3,000 in the priciest markets.

Standing beside the governor was Jamie Ding, the Lawrenceville resident who’s turned a 31-game winning streak on “Jeopardy!” into a platform for the housing cause. Ding works at the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency as multifamily and tax credit program administrator, which makes his presence less surprising than the headlines suggest.

Assemblyman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden) introduced Ding with a dig at the governor. “New Jersey’s most famous New Jerseyan. It’s not you, governor, I’m sorry,” Greenwald said.

Ding delivered the shortest speech of the event. No talking points, no charts.

“I’m tempted to try to say something really profound and esoteric, and I guess here it is: Housing is good. People, you know, need somewhere to live,” Ding said, according to New Jersey Monitor. “When you always consider something somebody else’s problem, it will never get solved. So it’s nice that we’re doing something responsible here.”

That’s the kind of plain-English framing that housing advocates have struggled to get through to Trenton for a long time. The policy crowd cheered.

Doucette’s council will have until September 30 to deliver the strategy. The council’s mandate covers three lanes: finding state-owned land that could support new housing, mapping the regulatory obstacles that slow or kill projects, and recommending concrete changes to rules and law. The New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency is one of the state entities expected to play a central role in that inventory work, given that it already tracks financing for affordable units across the state.

Sherrill’s order doesn’t appropriate money or change any existing law on its own. It sets up the machinery for proposals that would require legislative action, and in a Trenton that has spent decades watching affordable housing fights drag through the courts under Mount Laurel doctrine, machinery matters. The state Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel decisions require every municipality to zone for its fair share of affordable housing, but enforcement has been fitful, and the shortage has grown despite multiple rounds of litigation and legislative tinkering.

Housing advocates packed the Statehouse room because they know executive attention can shift the dynamic, even before a bill moves. Sherrill called out the full cost picture directly: utilities, healthcare, childcare, NJ Transit fares, groceries. Housing, she said, is where all of it collapses together.

Doucette now has until late September to show whether the council can turn that attention into an actual plan.