The Housing Plan, Explained

A 2024 amendment to the Fair Housing Act set a fixed calendar for the round. The state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) publishes non-binding estimates. Each town commits to its own numbers. Each town adopts a Housing Element and Fair Share Plan by June 30, 2025, and adopts the ordinances that carry the plan out by March 16, 2026.

Disputes go to a court-run Affordable Housing Dispute Resolution Program, created by the 2024 law and run under New Jersey Courts Directive #14-24. A member of the Program holds settlement conferences, hears objections and makes a recommendation to the county's housing judge, who decides. In Somerset County that is Judge William G. Mennen.

The reason towns go through all this is protection. Towns that comply are protected from builder's-remedy lawsuits, in which a developer argues that a town's zoning does not provide a realistic opportunity for affordable housing and asks a court to approve its project over the town's zoning.

Hillsborough has been through this before. Its Third Round case ended in a 2020 settlement with Fair Share Housing Center and a court finding of compliance in 2022, according to the township's housing page. That settlement used a vacant land adjustment to set a realistic development potential of 1,109 against a Third Round obligation of 1,378. The Fourth Round plan uses the same kind of adjustment, as the next section explains.

For the Fourth Round, the township filed a declaratory-judgment action on January 29, 2025, the day after it adopted its own number. The case is In the Matter of the Application of the Township of Hillsborough, docket SOM-L-000148-25.

The order the steps come in

565: the state's estimate

On October 18, 2024 the DCA estimated Hillsborough's Fourth Round obligations at a present need of 111 and a prospective need of 565. The law calls these estimates non-binding; towns could accept them or make their own determination.

270: the township's commitment

On January 28, 2025 the Township Committee adopted Resolution R-51-2025. It accepted the present need of 111, while reserving the right to lower it through a windshield survey, and committed to a prospective need of 270, “subject to any vacant land, durational and/or other adjustments” in the plan to come. The township's planner had reviewed the parcels the DCA counted as developable, found the data “overinclusive”, and concluded that “a number of the lands identified by the DCA are not developable”. Patch reported that the resolution passed unanimously. It directed the township's housing counsel to file the court case within 48 hours.

223: the realistic development potential

The plan the Planning Board adopted on June 12, 2025 starts from 565, then applies two adjustments that the state's rules allow when a town lacks vacant land:

• a vacant land adjustment for land in the sewer service area, mostly in the east of the township;
• a durational adjustment for land served by septic systems, mostly in the west.

Together these produce the township's realistic development potential, or RDP: the number of affordable homes the available land can realistically support now. The plan puts it at 223. The rest of the 565, 342 units, is the unmet need. It does not disappear: the plan says zoning adopted in the prior round for land in the sewer service area “is remaining in place” to address it.

300: the credits claimed

The plan counts 300 credits against the 223, a surplus of 77. How it gets there is the next section.

The obligation is measured in credits, not buildings. An affordable home earns one credit. Some kinds earn bonus credits: in this plan, group homes and housing built on land that was previously non-residential. The state caps bonus credits at 25 percent of the obligation, which the plan calculates as 56. The plan uses exactly 56.

The plan's Table 29 lists six mechanisms:

• Existing developments and group homes, nine sites: 40 affordable units and 17 bonus, 57 credits.
• Extending expiring affordability controls at Hillsborough Point, whose controls expire July 10, 2032: 15 units, 15 credits.
• Homestead Road, LLC: 96 affordable units, 96 credits.
• Milelli Hillsborough, Route 206: 37 units and 18.5 bonus, 55.5 credits.
• Falcon Road Partners: 50 units and 20.5 bonus, 70.5 credits.
• Habitat for Humanity, three duplexes: 6 units, 6 credits.

That is 244 affordable units and 56 bonus credits, 300 in all. The three inclusionary sites carry 222 of the 300, and they are large.

None of the three has been rezoned for the Fourth Round. That step is still ahead, and it is where residents get a formal say, as the last section of this page explains.

The township filed its plan with the court and the Program on June 25, 2025, within the deadline and the day after the Committee approved a resolution accepting it. (Patch reported that resolution without a vote tally.) Under the 2024 law, other parties could then challenge the plan. Twelve did, according to Resolution R-117-2026:

• Fair Share Housing Center, the affordable-housing advocacy group;
• 00 Hamilton LLC;
• Adoni Property Group LLC, which withdrew on February 10, 2026;
• AvalonBay Communities Inc.;
• Fairhaven Development LLC;
• Hillsborough RB LLC;
• M&M Realty Partners LLC;
• Murray Contracting and Homestead Corner LLC, which filed on August 28, 2025 and settled on March 24, 2026;
• Robertson Douglas Group Inc., which filed on August 29, 2025 and settled on March 24, 2026;
• Valley Industrial Partners LLC;
• West Essex Industrial Park LLC;
• Weston Road LLC.

The Program held settlement conferences on October 21, November 24 and December 9, 2025. They produced settlements with Murray and Robertson Douglas “by including projects on their respective properties” in the plan, but not with the others. On December 15 the Committee held a special meeting entirely in closed session, on affordable housing and a personnel matter; no action on housing was recorded in public. On December 22, 2025 the Program member heard oral argument from the remaining challengers.

The same recommendation found that the township had “demonstrated [a] willingness to engage in negotiations ... and to make significant revisions to its Plan”. On that basis it recommended that “immunity from exclusionary housing litigation should be extended to the Township for a few more months” while the judge oversees continued settlement talks.

On January 27, 2026 Judge Mennen ordered the township, by March 16, either to adopt its amended plan and implementing ordinances, or to adopt a binding resolution committing to adopt them once the disputes are resolved. Any ordinances adopted under the first option would be “subject to change based on any forthcoming settlement”.

The binding resolution

On March 10, 2026 the Committee took the second option the judge had allowed. Resolution R-117-2026 commits the township to adopting the ordinances and resolutions that carry out its plan “following the resolution of the disputes”, adjusted to reflect their outcome. It passed on a consent agenda that the minutes record as unanimously approved, and was filed with the court the next day. No Fourth Round rezoning ordinance has been introduced since.

The settlements

On March 24, 2026 the Committee approved three settlement resolutions on a consent agenda the minutes record as unanimously approved:

• R-131-2026, Murray Contracting and Homestead Corner, LLC. The property is 279 Homestead Road, near Route 206 (Block 200.02, part of Lot 12, and Lots 12.01 and 16). Murray withdraws its challenge with prejudice. This is a different property from the Homestead Road, LLC site in the plan.
• R-138-2026, Robertson Douglas Group, Inc. Property on Mountainview Road (Block 175, Lots 25 and 41).
• R-133-2026, a first amendment to the Valley Road Realty settlement. This is a Third Round site of 44.53 acres on Valley Road (Block 151.09, Lot 227), settled in 2020. The amendment reduces the number of market-rate units and changes their type “while maintaining the affordable housing obligation on the Property as previously agreed upon”.

Since March

No settlement resolution has come to a public vote since March 24. “Affordable Housing” has been on the Committee's closed-session list at most of its meetings since then, including the October 13 and October 27 agendas. On September 22, 2026, responding to public comment, the township attorney said that “any settlement agreement will be approved at a public meeting.”

The Homestead Road site

The largest site in the housing plan is the Homestead Road, LLC property: about 90 acres at 189 and 200 Homestead Road, listed for 398 homes, 96 of them affordable. It is also the site of a 543,299 sq ft warehouse plan that the Planning Board denied in September 2025, and which the developer is challenging in court. Being listed in the plan does not rezone the land; that would take an ordinance, a Planning Board review and a public hearing.

Murray Contracting's settled property at 279 Homestead Road is a different parcel, near Route 206.

Warehouse landowners among the challengers

At least three of the twelve challengers had sought warehouses in Hillsborough: Hillsborough RB, Valley Industrial Partners and Weston Road. None of the three has settled on the public record. The minutes of March 10, 2026 record the township attorney, answering a resident's question, as saying that “Weston Road is interested in putting in inclusionary housing if they can't get a warehouse approved.”

The warehouse side of the story, including the Homestead Road denial and the suits that followed, is on the warehouses issue page.

• What the April 23, 2025 court order set as Hillsborough's obligation: 270, 565 or another number.
• The terms of the settlements with Murray, Robertson Douglas and Valley Road Realty: unit counts, affordable counts and any other conditions.
• Whether any of the other nine challengers have settled. The public record shows none.
• Whether the township's protection from builder's-remedy suits has been extended, and to when.
• When the township will adopt the rezoning for the plan's sites, and how the plan will change to reflect the settlements.
• What the November 10, 2026 special meeting will take up beyond the flood ordinance hearing already scheduled. No agenda had been posted as of October 29.
• The text of the Program member's written recommendation, known only through the quotations in R-117-2026.

If any of these surfaces, in a settlement resolution, a court filing or a public meeting, it belongs here.

• November 10, 2026: special Township Committee meeting. The flood ordinance hearing is scheduled; whether anything on housing is added is not yet known.
• November 24 and December 15, 2026: Township Committee meetings. Watch for settlement resolutions. The township attorney has said any settlement will be approved in public.
• The rezoning. Every implementing ordinance must be introduced, sent to the Planning Board for a master plan consistency review, and given a public hearing at second reading, where residents can speak. Introduced ordinances are posted for comment at Engage Hillsborough.
• The court case. New filings appear on the NJ Courts Somerset affordable-housing page, under Hillsborough Township, docket SOM-L-000148-25.
• December 10, 2026: Valley Road Realty at the Planning Board. The application is for 199 homes, townhouses in 25 buildings and a 59-unit apartment building, in the MFID-1 multifamily inclusionary zone. The decision deadline has been extended to January 15, 2027.
• The master plan update. The township has said a new Housing Element and Fair Share Plan “may be considered before the end of 2026” as part of the update. See Master plan update.

Other affordable housing already moving

Sherman Tract Phase II, 88 affordable family rentals on Camplain Road, was approved by the Planning Board in 2024. On July 28, 2026 the Committee consented to the project's sewer (treatment works) application to the state, R-233-2026, on a consent agenda the minutes record as unanimously approved. In January 2026 the Committee appointed Rehabco, Inc. as the township's affordable-housing administrative agent.

A shorter version of this page is the article 565, 270, 223 and 300, and the case is tracked as it moves on the Fourth Round housing issue page.