hundreds of towns have now officially adopted affordable housing obligations required by a new state law accepting the state's calculations for just how many homes they'll need to build and Rehab over the next decade in order to meet their share of units but even as a large majority of towns have agreed to move forward others are offering counter proposals citing miscalculations made by the state or rejecting the estimates outright arguing it'll cause overdevelopment and an over burden on their communities senior correspondent Brenda Flanigan has the latest I think we want to be reasonable that that we'll do our fair share um but we want it to be our fair share East Brunswick mayor Brad Cohen says his Town's among the 431 in Jersey that so far signed up to provide their fair share of affordable housing as required by state law it's the latest round of housing obligations for each Town designed to keep New Jersey housing cost Within Reach over the next decade Colin agrees with that we need to try to help our starting teachers and the people working in medical offices and the starting police officers and all these people who who are probably somebody's child um and not force them to have to leave New Jersey because it's so unaffordable the state calculates New Jersey needs to build a rehabilitate 65,000 housing units for its current population and another 81,000 over the next decade it's the fourth and latest round of State imposed fair share housing requirements since the program began and Advocates are impressed to see more than 400 towns signing on that is a level of participation we have never seen in the 50 years since the M Laurel Doctrine went into effect and I really shows the law is working and and I think a lot of these smaller towns are saying wow here's an actually a way to comply that doesn't require spending a lot of money on lawyers that doesn't require an endless process why don't we do it fair share Advocate Adam Gordon says most participating towns accepted housing requirements calculated by Jersey's Department of Community Affairs but about a quarter of them like East Brunswick have also filed declaratory judgment complaints disputing some of the numbers East Brunswick claims only 44 acres here are even buildable not 175 so there were some areas that they had given us in in the map that they provided that were just not buildable so we came back to them saying that we're not against affordable housing we're not telling you we don't want to do it at all but what we are doing is looking at where we think they could be and where you think we could be East Brunswick pointed to deed restricted Farmland wet lands and rights of way that are unbuildable and filed to reduce its future obligation down by about 50 units Tom's River also filed a dispute to slash its 10year share by 556 units down to 114 the shore toown argues frantic rebuilding following superstorm Sandy made it look like the area was enjoying a population boom instead of replacing lost housing stock and I guess their idea is is the more development you've had the more you can continue to have right so that number for our entire region is skewed because all of Ocean County and a good portion of Mammoth County uh you know we had tens of thousands of homes destroyed so the their their number is wrong Brick Township filed a similarly aggressive dispute to chop its future affordable housing obligation by 431 units down to just 29 citing Wetlands restrictions and other building obstacles Gordon expects that could lead to a challenge I think it is highly unlikely that uh you can comply with the laws calculations and be off by that much we're obviously going to have to take a closer look at that and and decide whether we file an an objection a DCA spokeswoman says the department used aerial imagery to identify potentially vacant land areas and analyzed construction permit data to make housing calculations New Jersey Suburban towns have launched legal battles against fair share housing obligations ever since the first Mount Laurel decision some 27 municipalities sued to block this fourth round and have so far lost in court claiming the laws unconstitutional and unfair to suburbs that's where the biggest push back is coming from you know for every 10 people that move into an Urban Aid municipality Suburban communities have to create new affordable housing for four people and that and it's a broken formula the answer to it is not building on every last available inch of space in the state what happens next each Town's housing plan and their disputes over the numbers will be evaluated towns will have until June to formally adopt building plans that will house the next generation of residents I'm Brenda Flanigan NJ Spotlight news