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On July 17, 2008, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine signed into law a piece of legislation that expands requirements for all N.J. towns, including wealthy suburbs, to provide their fair share of affordable housing. Championed by Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, who represents Camden, one of America’s poorest cities, the bill has been called the most significant affordable housing legislation passed anywhere in the country in several decades.

One of the 500 people in attendance at the bill signing was Next American City’s co-founder and attorney with New Jersey’s Fair Share Housing Center, Adam Gordon. He later caught up with Speaker Roberts in his Trenton office to get the story behind the legislation.

What prompted you to get interested in this legislation in the first place?

Since 1987 I’ve lived in Camden and seen the challenges the city has had as it tries to stabilize its housing stock and develop in a diverse way. It became clear to me that there was a growing concentration of poverty in Camden, and I had the sense that same situation was replicating itself in other cities throughout New Jersey. I knew that if we didn’t have some economic diversity in Camden, we wouldn’t be able to grow the tax base and the city wouldn’t develop any self-sufficiency.

As I began to learn more about housing policy, I concluded that it clearly contributed to racial segregation in New Jersey and to the further decay of urban New Jersey.