Articles Housing plan
Round Four, Explained: What Montgomery Actually Owes and How It Is Being Met
A 260-unit obligation for 2025–2035, met not by building but by extending the affordability controls on 208 existing affordable homes — 210 units in the plan's table once two carried-over third-round credits are counted. What the numbers are, what a Master Plan can and cannot do, and why builder's-remedy immunity is the thing to watch.
Almost every argument in Montgomery over the last two years traces back to one number. Here is where it comes from and what the township is doing about it.
Where the obligation comes from
New Jersey’s Mount Laurel doctrine requires every municipality to provide a realistic opportunity for its fair share of the region’s affordable housing. In 2024 the Legislature abolished the Council on Affordable Housing and replaced it with an Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program, running on a fixed calendar: accept an obligation by January 31, 2025; file challenges by February 28; a Program decision by March 31; adopt a Housing Element and Fair Share Plan by June 30, 2025; adopt the implementing ordinances by mid-March 2026.
Montgomery followed that calendar. By Resolution 25-1-54, adopted January 27, 2025, the Township Committee accepted a present need of 73 units and a prospective need of 260 units. It filed a declaratory judgment action in Somerset County Superior Court two days later — Docket No. SOM-L-153-25, the case every subsequent step has run through — and Judge William G. Mennen entered an order in late March 2025 setting those obligations. The procedural chain is recited in full in the township’s own March 19, 2026 Committee minutes and again, in more detail, in Resolution #26-6-194 in the June 18, 2026 minutes. The township’s own records disagree on the order’s date: Resolution #26-3-113 (March 19, 2026) and the adopted amended plan both say March 26, 2025, while Resolution #26-6-194 (June 18, 2026) says March 27, and the plan’s appendix reference calls it the April 8, 2025 order. We use March 26.
The two numbers mean different things. Present need — 73 — is rehabilitation of existing substandard housing occupied by low- and moderate-income households. Prospective need — 260 — is the obligation for the Fourth Round period, 2025 through 2035. When people say Montgomery “owes 260 units,” that is the number they mean.
Credits, not buildings
The obligation is measured in credits, not construction. A newly built affordable unit earns a credit. So does extending the affordability controls on a home that is already deed-restricted and would otherwise return to the open market. Certain mechanisms earn bonus credits; the state caps bonuses at 25 percent of the obligation, which for Montgomery is 65.
This distinction is what the 2026 amendment turns on. The plan adopted in June 2025 met the obligation mostly by zoning for new inclusionary development — 417 units on the Kenvue campus, 180 at 23 Orchard Road, plus assisted-living credits. The amended plan adopted March 9, 2026 meets it almost entirely by preservation: paying to extend 30-year deed restrictions, under the state’s Uniform Housing Affordability Controls, on existing affordable homes whose controls expire between 2028 and 2034 — Pike Run’s between 2028 and 2031, Montgomery Glen’s in 2032, McKinley Commons’ between 2032 and 2034.
The math, as the Planning Board adopted it
Board planner Michael Sullivan presented the following on March 9, 2026 (video, 8:35):
| Development | Units preserved | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Pike Run | 96 of 210 family rental apartments | 144 (including 48 bonus) |
| McKinley Court | 60 senior rental units | 75 (58 creditable under the state cap on age-restricted units, plus 17 bonus) |
| McKinley Commons | 35 ownership units | 35 (ownership units earn no bonus) |
| Montgomery Glen | 19 units | 19 |
Together with two Third Round surplus credits carried forward at Orchard Road and Village Walk, that is 210 preserved units plus 65 bonus credits — 275 credits against a 260-unit obligation, a surplus of 15.
Pike Run is what makes the arithmetic work. When the June 2025 plan was written, staff had approached the owner of Pike Run’s 210 affordable apartments and the owner “were not able to agree to extend the controls” — the owner’s investors expected to convert to market rate, staff said, and the township told the Planning Board it had no way to compel participation. The owner’s change of position — an agreement in principle for at least 96 units, reported to the Committee on November 13, 2025 and described on December 4 as verbal and not yet executed — is the piece that completed the plan. As the township attorney put it on December 4: “96 does get us to the full plan, and that is why there’ll be no other developments included in our housing plan. Not Kenvue, not anything else.”
The public record does not explain why that position changed. The June 2025 answer is on the record and the agreement in principle is on the record in November and December; what happened in between is not stated at any meeting, in any minutes, or in the plan itself. We are not going to guess, and readers should treat any confident explanation with suspicion.
What it costs
Preservation is not free. Ordinance #25-1766, adopted December 4, 2025, appropriated $1,100,000 — $650,000 from the township’s COAH (affordable housing) trust fund plus $450,000 authorized as bonds or notes. If you own one of the affected deed-restricted homes, two things are worth knowing, both explained on the record in November and December 2025: your controls are extended under the township’s existing right in your original deed restriction whether or not you opt in, and the opt-in is what triggers an additional $10,000 payment, which is what the bond funds.
What a Master Plan is — and is not
A Housing Element and Fair Share Plan is an element of the township’s Master Plan. A Master Plan is a policy document. It states what the township intends; it does not itself change zoning. Rezoning is a separate Township Committee process, by ordinance, with its own public hearing and its own Planning Board referral. Staff made this point explicitly at the February 9, 2026 information session, and it is the single most common misunderstanding about this whole process.
For context: Montgomery adopted its first Master Plan in 1971, and the last reexamination was in 2017. The Municipal Land Use Law requires one every ten years, so the next is due in 2027. Nor is amending a fair share plan mid-round unusual here: the Third Round plan was adopted in 2008 and amended in 2010, 2018 and 2020 — precedent the township cited in 2026.
The two dates that matter next
The 2030 midpoint review. Round Four runs to 2035, with a required midpoint review at the halfway point. That review is the checkpoint for a plan built on preservation, and it matters more here than it would elsewhere, because not every extension is signed. Counsel disclosed to the Planning Board on March 9, 2026 that inclusion of the McKinley Court and McKinley Commons units is premised on mutually acceptable discussions with their owner. Those controls do not expire until 2032, so there is time to reach terms, and the 2030 midpoint review is the fallback checkpoint if none is reached.
That is a real soft spot in the 275. Between them, McKinley Court (75 credits) and McKinley Commons (35) account for 110 of the 275 — well more than the 15-credit surplus would absorb if the arrangement fell apart. It is not a reason to disbelieve the plan; it is a reason to watch 2030, and to read “275 credits” as a number with a condition attached rather than as money in the bank.
The compliance hearing — which has not happened. On June 18, 2026 the Township Committee authorized a written settlement with Fair Share Housing Center. On September 17, 2026 the township attorney told the Committee that the settlement “is not final until it is reviewed by the court and approved by the court in what’s called a compliance hearing,” and that the judge will not hold one until the township meets with E. Kahn Development. No Judgment of Compliance and Repose has issued.
Why builder’s-remedy immunity is the whole game
A municipality with a court-approved plan is protected from builder’s remedy lawsuits. In one, a developer sues claiming the town’s zoning fails to provide a realistic opportunity for affordable housing. If the developer wins, a court can order approval of that developer’s project — typically high-density, with an affordable set-aside — over the town’s zoning. At the June 2025 hearings the township’s planning consultant, asked to name towns that had lost not just immunity but jurisdiction over their planning boards, answered South Brunswick and Englewood Cliffs. The township attorney described the Englewood Cliffs case three days later: it lost its immunity and its zoning, and the court-directed development came in substantially bigger than what the borough had turned down.
That is the exposure the township attorney was describing on September 17: without a compliance hearing “we could lose our immunity from builder’s remedy lawsuits” (video, 56:40).
One last point, because it is easy to miss: the amended plan does not prohibit inclusionary development. Staff said on March 9 that the township remains free to zone for it. It simply is not needed to meet this round’s obligation.