Henry Kent-Smith was quoted in the Law360 article "NJ Court Checks Gov. Powers with Affordable Housing Ruling." While the full text can be found in the July 10, 2013, issue of Law360, a synopsis is noted below.
The New Jersey state Supreme Court stopped Governor Christie's bid to abolish the Council on Affordable Housing (COAH), making it clear that doing away with the agency will take cooperation between the governor and the state Legislature.
The decision preserves COAH for now, but the Supreme Court is ready to rule on COAH's most recent regulations. The "third-round rules" were invalidated by an appellate decision in 2010. Henry Kent Smith views this as the more pertinent issue rather than COAH's abolition.
"This is just a matter of who is going to do the administration of affordable housing: Is it going to be COAH or the DCA?" said Kent-Smith, who represented the Housing Community Development Network of New Jersey, the Corporation for Supportive Housing and Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness in the case. "We now know it will be COAH that will administer the third-round rules, we just don't know what those rules will be and what they will look like."
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