New Jersey town can’t restrict housing ownership by age, court rules

A Berkeley Township ordinance limiting ownership in senior housing communities violates state, federal law, an appeals court finds. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

New Jersey municipalities cannot restrict housing ownership by age, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The three-judge panel found a Berkeley Township ordinance that bars individuals under the age of 55 from owning homes at certain senior housing communities runs afoul of discrimination protections in the federal Fair Housing Act and New Jersey’s Law Against Discrimination.

“By setting a minimum age for property ownership in retirement communities, the ordinance was discriminatory, and the restriction did not fall within the limited housing for older persons exemption,” Appellate Division Judge Greta Gooden Brown wrote for the court .

Though federal law gives local governments the ability to restrict housing to elderly residents, those restrictions can only be placed on housing occupancy, not ownership, the court found.

Their decision affirms a lower court ruling that found merit to arguments by New Jersey Realtors, an industry group, that charged ownership restrictions would depress home sales by shrinking the pool of eligible buyers and leave elderly residents unable to bequeath their properties to younger family members.

The court added ownership restrictions chafe uncomfortably against property rights guarantees in the Fourteenth Amendment and would likely not pass a balancing test that weighs the public need against the injury to residents’ rights.

“Applying that standard, we conclude the Ordinance unreasonably infringes upon the well-established and constitutionally protected right to own and sell property and the restriction unreasonably and irrationally exceeds the public need,” Gooden Brown wrote.

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