Finally, comes the matter of affordable housing, the source of the greatest public confusion and acrimony over the proposed development. 

 

The minimal affordable housing component of the Stockton Street project obscures the truth: this is a luxury for-profit rental development, not a act of altruism.  It will do nothing to correct Princeton’s glaring social disparities and will only exacerbate them. It is the worst possible way to correct the municipality’s acute shortage of affordable housing while looking to the future. Far from a triumph for economic justice, it dramatically replicates age-old economic injustices. 

 

As far as the critics are concerned, the only issue concerning affordable housing is that the residents desire more of it than the Stockton project plan calls for.  

 

There is fine print in affordable housing legislation that undermines its original laudable intentions – fine print about which this project’s supporters are silent.  Above all, the affordable housing provision sunsets at some point between twenty and thirty years after any project is completed, at which point the 20% rental unit set aside converts to market rental prices, with the dislocated households lacking any equity. This is no long-term solution to Princeton’s severe affordable housing problem.

 

Nor is squeezing six very low-income and 18 low-income households into a complex with nearly 200 luxury units any way to handle affordable housing. In fact, it’s grotesque -- a declaration that social equity and dignity are the last things on Princeton’s mind. Of all the cynical features of this project, this one may be the worst.

 

Creative solutions for long-term affordability 

A better solution to Princeton’s problem would involve distributing relatively low-density affordable housing units all over town, possibly but not necessarily with public subsidies. Ideally, these would include a pathway to individual home ownership. This would come far closer than the current plan to filling the need for the so-called “middle missing,” mid-density low-rise housing, repeatedly lauded by Council members – except when it comes to the Herring Properties project. We seek affordability with dignity, a true integration across lines of class and ethnicity.  

 

Princeton is an extraordinary place, with a singular opportunity to set a new and higher national standard for truly integrated affordable housing. We have the intellectual, scientific, and artistic resources to come up with amazing innovative designs and plans. And we have the financial resources, private as well as public, needed to fund those plans and complete them.   

 

In fact, along these lines, in 2023, the PCRD presented to the Council as a possible starting point for discussion, its alternative plan that would have produced 100 percent affordable housing, 50 units in all – more than the current Stockton Street project provides – but with a density and design fully in keeping with the surrounding neighborhood.  

 

Predictably, the Council members summarily rejected the proposal, finding excuses about how it would prove too costly for Princeton taxpayers, all the while loudly touting the benefits of private high-density development remarkably similar to those later cited by the developer to whom they would eventually award a $40 million tax break. Public-private initiatives, foundation and other philanthropic support, even the commonly used instrument of a municipal bond issue evidently never crossed their minds. Creative energy and initiative to advance equity along with historical preservation is not this Council’s strong suit.

 

Still, even now, it’s not too late for Princeton to take a shot at something wonderful, even revolutionary, starting with the Stockton site.

 

​