A Day for Joe

I may not have all of the details accurately, but I think I understand the general principles. In New Jersey, there is a law that protects regular people from being shut out of communities that are primarily for the wealthy. The way I understand it, every time there is new construction of any size, the developer is required to provide a certain amount of what is called "affordable" housing; this can be either rented or sold to individuals whose income is below a certain level. Joe has worked with a number of developers in northern New Jersey, designing single family homes and other types of residential architecture. A couple of the developers have retained his services to do the "affordable" components, too.

One township is very protective of its historic buildings and charm, and they worked with the developer on a recent large housing project to assure that the "affordable" housing blended in with the tone of the town. Joe was hired by this town/developer team several years ago to produce the first phase of affordables and today was the ribbon-cutting for the final phase. The units he designed are similar in style to the large homes in the area. What looks like a McMansion is actually two or four homes. One building type holds two three-bedroom townhomes and the other building type holds three two-bedroom and one one-bedroom unit. The picture above is one of the latter types.

The congresswoman that Andrew works for down in D.C. serves on a committee that is concerned with housing for the poor on a national level and Joe thought Andrew might find this project interesting. So Andrew and Amy drove up from D.C. today to tour the town, see the various phases, explore the model units, and have dinner with us before driving back home.

I'd spent much of the past week with Sherry, Chris, et al., and it was so nice to spend a large portion of today with A&A, enjoying their pride in Joe's accomplishment and hearing what they have been up to.

A different sort of a day, and a really good one, too.