Today, will be a historic day for the city of Paterson and the whole State of New Jersey.   Today, Governor Corzine will sign into law a change to the Fair Housing Act of 1985 abolishing RCAs or Regional Contribution Agreements.  So what are RCAs and why is this good?

Regional Contribution Agreements “have allowed wealthy municipalities to pay poor municipalities to accept their affordable housing obligation. This law helped perpetuate segregation and increased the concentration of poverty in our inner-cities.”  This is the way it worked:  A cash strapped city like Paterson would receive money from lets say Wayne to build low income housing for them; then Paterson would also take money various other municipalities creating a pool of folks of low resources.

This would and has increase the concentration of poverty in the city of Paterson and other urban cities in New Jersey.  Concentrating poverty in one area has never worked - which is the reason why housing projects are being knock-down all over the country. More>>