RED BANK: FUTILE SEARCH FOR A HOUSE FOR MOM

Jacob Morales. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)

By BRIAN DONOHUE

Jacob Morales walks the streets of Red Bank like a sidewalk sleuth, scoping vacant houses, photographing oversized lots that could be divided, or tiny vacant plots buried in tax debt. Any place that maybe could fit a little house for his mom.

She’s lived six decades in Jersey City, he says, “and living in Jersey City is not easy, man.”

“It’s so calm and friendly,’’ he said of his life in Red Bank. “I just want her to experience Red Bank and start a foundation and give her purpose over here.”

The undersized lot at 1 Berry Street. Below, Morales, center, speaking with Jackson at the January zoning board meeting.  (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)

Last year, he thought he had found it: a vacant tiny lot on Berry Street, just blocks from his own house on South Bridge Avenue. 

With visions of his future children walking to grandma’s house, he hired lawyers and pored through property records to discover it was once home to a small house that had been demolished. Why couldn’t he build another one?  

He bought the 33-by-50 lot for $20,000, says he paid roughly $60,000 in back taxes and applied to build a two-story, 1,675-square-foot home.

“I wanted that so bad for my mom,’’ he said. 

He still does. Morales’s plan was scuttled when next-door neighbor, Rose Marie Jackson objected to the house, which needed a setback variance.

Another glitch arose: legal precedent set by a 1987 State Superior Court decision that said owners of such non-conforming lots must first offer to sell to adjacent property owners before they could obtain variances.

Boxed in by the laws, that’s what he did, and wound up selling the lot to Jackson for $130,000.

“You have to reach out to neighbors to offer for sale to them or offer to purchase excess land from them,’’ said his lawyer, Kevin Asadi.  “And I didn’t do that because that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to develop the lot.”

To create more affordable housing options, Asadi said Red Bank and other municipalities could revise ordinances to allow construction on undersized lots if building standards are met.

But for now, Morales keeps looking, his dilemma an increasingly familiar one for Red Bank residents who, even if they already own a home, wonder how their children will be afford to stay here, or how they can keep their parents close as they age. 

Options are scarce. Red Bank zoning laws also prohibit accessory dwelling units, or ADU’s – garage apartments, backyard cottages or smaller homes that sit on the property of existing structures. 

ADU’s are increasingly seen by housing advocates and groups like the AARP as a way of addressing housing shortages nationwide. They have been legalized in several states, including California, and in New Jersey towns including Maplewood, Princeton and South Orange. A bill proposed in the state legislature would require municipalities to allow them statewide. And in his budget address yesterday Gov. Phil Murphy proposed a $10 million pilot program to help municipalities build more ADUs.

Mayor Billy Portman and Deputy Mayor Kate Triggiano said they were hoping to begin discussions towards allowing ADUs in Red Bank.

“We all ran in support of the new master plan, which recommends allowing ADU’s, among other things,” Portman said in an email.  “Affordable housing and housing that is affordable are incredibly important to this governing body.   It is definitely something the council will be discussing.”

Morales’s experience on the once-affordable West Side also illustrates Red Bank’s version of what housing experts call the “missing middle” a lack of homes in the US housing supply for the middle class.

On Shrewsbury Avenue, a lot where a builder scrapped plans to build three townhomes instead saw rise to a record-setting $1.1 million sale last week. 

“It’s crazy – I’m like, what?” Morales said of the eye-popping sale. 

And a few blocks away, Lunch Break, the 40-year old social service center is about to cut the ribbon on a massive expansion – made necessary in part by a growing number of people who can’t find affordable housing.

“We have a lot of people living in cars,” Lunch Break Director of Operations Kevin McGee said recently.

Morales hold no ill will towards Jackson, who could not be reached for comment.

But he wishes she would have seen the advantages of another house on the lot with his mother living there.

“If she would’ve been okay with it, I would have been building as we speak,’’ he said standing on Berry Street this week.

For now, he’s focusing his efforts toward on a more celestial address.

“God willing, one day I’m going to get lucky and find something in Red Bank,” he said. “I just keep praying.”

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