Monarch Housing’s Blog!

In today’s Star-Ledger there was an op-ed by John Farmer, Jr. entitled “Sly tricks don’t equal real reform“. Mr. Farmer is a former New Jersey attorney general and was senior counsel to the 9/11 commission. He is now in private practice, and is an adjunct professor of national security law at Rutgers Law School.

His article makes the case for the failure of the so called reform process in NJ. He begins the article by referencing the classic Steve Martin routine in which he claims “you can be a millionaire and not pay taxes.” The punch line is that when Martin’s character is confronted by the IRS about not paying taxes his answer is I forgot.

Mr. Farmer sums up his frustration and what should be ours as well in his closing paragraph. “When that day comes, and a future generation asks why we failed to make the courageous decisions that would have avoided calamity, we may be left to remember Steve Martin’s millionaire. When finally confronted by the IRS about why he hadn’t paid any taxes, he replied, grinning sheepishly, “I forgot!”

The multiple problems that we face cannot be solved by saying we forgot or that we were selfish. We encourage our readers to read Mr. Farmer’s column.

This is an excerpt of his comments on affordable housing.

There are, however, signs of change.

There is no question, for instance, that New Jersey has faced a housing crisis for low- and moderate-income families for decades; this reality led to the infamous Mount Laurel series of Supreme Court decisions mandating the provision of low-income housing.

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Tags: affordable-housing, COAH, Ending Homelessness, James-Farmer, Jr., supporitve-housing, Supportive Housing