HANDS & MAPLEWOOD

HANDS has expanded its development frontier by collaborating with Maplewood Township to develop an affordable 3 bed, 2 bath single family home sold to a first-time homeowner with an immigrant background and a new family.

With a median household income of $150,000, Maplewood, NJ, located in Essex County, is not a municipality typically associated with affordable housing. However, with an average housing price of almost $800,000, Maplewood is out of reach for most of the population.

In 2018, Maplewood identified the need to build 362 and preserve 6 affordable housing units in their Housing Element & Fair Share Plan. However, Maplewood lacked the expertise needed to oversee and implement its stated objectives and reached out to HANDS to help move their plan forward. The potential collaboration was the perfect opportunity for HANDS to both broaden its impact and expand its mission by bringing affordable development to affluent towns.

In late 2020, HANDS identified its first project: a 3-bedroom home with a lot of potential. Once rehabilitated, the property was placed on the market and received nearly 2,700 applicants and was sold to a first-time homeowner with an immigrant background and a new family.

This successful collaboration comes at an important juncture in the affordable housing movement. In 2018, after recognizing that local governments faced no legal requirement to provide affordable housing from 1999 to 2015, the state Supreme Court directed municipalities to meet their affordable housing requirements. Since then, municipalities across the state, many with no previous affordable housing experience, have been working to meet this need. We believe this is a perfect time to continue expanding our model to other affluent municipalities with unmet affordable housing obligations.