Mayor Ras Baraka is proud to introduce the Newark Housing Tracker. This tool tracks the City of Newark’s progress towards our housing goals:

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1. Add 3,000 new housing units (market rate and affordable) across all five wards, ready for residents to move in.

2. Fund the creation or preservation of 6,600 affordable homes, prioritizing units affordable to Newarkers making less than 30 percent area median income (AMI).

3. Convey all of the vacant properties currently held by the City or Land Bank, which are suitable for residential development and not currently under Residential. Development Agreements (RDAs), with at least 30 percent of the units developed on these sites affordable to residents making at or below 80 percent AMI.

4. Support 1,500 new and 200 existing low- and moderate-income homeowners by 2026.

5. Support 10,000 vulnerable or unsheltered households annually by 2026.

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Mayor Baraka set forth these five critical, measurable goals on August 9, 2021. They are a call – and a challenge – to the City of Newark to ensure that all Newarkers have access to safe, decent, and affordable housing. Moreover, they seek to ensure that Newark continues to be a vibrant gateway to the opportunities of the region for all, regardless of income, race, ethnicity, or immigration status.

The Housing Tracker is an important transparency tool, providing clear information to keep Newark residents, businesses, non-profits, and other interested parties informed on progress towards our shared goals. Its regularly updated metrics support improved collaboration between the City and housing stakeholders by conveying the key details needed to understand and address Newark’s housing needs. We encourage you to browse the tracker and its data visualizations

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Instructions:

This Tracker contains a total of 4 visualization dashboards. Click the tabs at the top of the Tracker to cycle through the different visualizations, all of which display different information.

These visualizations are interactive! You can zoom in or out and pan around our maps using the controls on the left-hand side. Hover your cursor over a project on a map to learn more about the project. Hover your cursor over a bar on a chart to learn about what that bar represents.

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Each of the first three slides on the visualization represents progress towards one Newark’s 5-year housing goals. The final slide depicts progress Newark is making on reducing the housing cost burden of residents, based on the results of the American Community Survey conducted every year by the US Census Bureau.

Definitions of terminology specific to the housing industry are provided in our glossary, provided at the bottom of this webpage.

Glossary:

Affordable Housing – Rental or for-sale housing for which the occupant is paying no more than 30% of their gross income on housing costs, including utilities. Affordable housing can be made available to households earning under specific AMI levels; for instance, one unit may be reserved for households earning 30% of AMI, while another unit may be for households earning up to 60% of AMI. Other affordable housing may not be regulated by income, but via rent control instead.

Area Median Income (AMI) – For all cities across the country, an Area Median Income is defined each year by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) based on annual median household income within a region. For Newark, this region is called the Newark, NJ HUD Metro Fair Market Rent Area (FMR) and includes Essex County, NJ; Morris County, NJ; Sussex County, NJ; and Union County, NJ. In 2021, the AMI for the Newark, NJ HUD Metro FMR Area was $107,400. This reflects the higher incomes in our surrounding suburbs.

Extremely-low-income – Defined as households that are earning 30% of the Area Median Income or less (specific income thresholds depend on the size of the household).

Funded vs. Constructed – An affordable housing unit that is funded has had its source of funding to keep it permanently at a price available to low-income households, even if the unit has not been built yet. This also includes newly rent-controlled units. A unit that is constructed has been built by its developer and has received a certificate of occupancy from the City of Newark certifying it for safe occupation by a family.

Housing Cost Burden/Rent Burden –Households that spend over 30% of their gross income on rent or on costs related to homeownership are considered “cost burdened”. If a household pays more than 50% of its gross income on rent, it is considered “extremely cost burdened.”

Housing Preservation – Repair and rehabilitation activities taken to ensure that housing remains livable and safe. Housing preservation may add or extend affordability requirements to a property, making or keeping it available to low or moderate-income households.

Housing Unit – A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a mobile home, a group of rooms, or a single room that is occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters.

Land Auction – Newark periodically holds auctions to allow certain parcels of city-owned land to interested parties. Newark is in the process of phasing out land auctions in favor of utilizing the Newark Land Bank instead.

Land Bank – A Land Bank is a nonprofit organization, often controlled by a government or government-affiliated entity, that owns land and makes that land available to the public in exchange for productive use, much like how a traditional bank will give a loan in exchange for a productive investment. The Newark Land Bank was established in 2019, and is run through Invest Newark.

Low-income – Defined as households that are earning between 30% and 50% of Area Median Income (specific income thresholds depend on the size of the household).

Moderate-income – Defined as households that earn between 50% and 80% of Area Median Income (specific income thresholds depend on the size of the household).

Newark Housing Authority (NHA) – The Newark Housing Authority is our city’s local public housing authority. It owns and operates public housing in the city of Newark, and also distributes Housing Choice Vouchers (formerly known as Section 8) to residents with qualifying incomes.

New Housing Unit – A newly constructed home or apartment. This does not include existing units, I.e. that have been rehabilitated.

Redevelopment Agreement (RDA) – An RDA is an agreement between the city and a developer to take control of a property and develop the property to a certain standard. RDAs often prescribe that by a certain date, a developer should have built a certain number of housing units at a certain level of affordability on a site. If a developer fails to follow-through on an RDA, the city is empowered to take back the property.

Rent Control – Rent control is a set of regulations that dictated when a landlord can raise rent on a tenant and by how much. Many older apartment buildings in Newark are subject to rent control. Most newer buildings, as well as owner-occupied 1-3 family buildings, have exemptions from rent control.

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