-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Judith R. Halasz, Climbing Mount Laurel: The Struggle for Affordable Housing and Social Mobility in an American Suburb By Douglas S. Massey, Len Albright, Rebecca Casciano, Elizabeth Derickson, and David N. Kinsey Princeton University Press. 2013. 288 pages. $35.00 cloth, Social Forces, Volume 94, Issue 3, March 2016, Page e75, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sou047
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
When Ethel Lawrence and her neighbors organized the Springville Community Action Committee in 1967 to replace the dilapidated housing that low-income African American residents had called home for generations with a 36-unit development, the alarmed townspeople of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, foisted a protracted battle to keep affordable housing out of their suburban backyards. Racism; classism; fears of increasing tax burdens, growing crime, and declining home values; and old-fashioned political wrangling kept the issue of exclusionary zoning under litigation and stalled the development for three decades. Ultimately, the judgments in this case became the foundation of the Mount Laurel legal doctrine, which states that all communities have an affirmative obligation to provide their fair share of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income households. Not only was Mount Laurel compelled to allow the development of affordable housing in its midst, but all New Jersey suburbs would be as well. In the end, the 140-unit affordable-housing development that would be named after Ethel Lawrence emerged as a mobility program beneficial to its residents and benign to the larger community.
