South Orange Losing Population?

Per the article below, South Orange is experiencing a population decline. But more serious is the following paragraph..

Towns like Irvington, Orange, East Orange, South Orange, Harrison, Bloomfield and Hillside have each seen residents depart since the turn-of-the-century Census. It’s in towns like this where residents say high taxes, crime, lack of city services and poor code enforcement have driven down the quality of life.

However, Livingston, West Orange and surrounding towns have been on an incline with many new residential developments

IS this accurate? Driven down the quality of life? Where is this information coming from?

Quite disturbing

https://www.tapinto.net/towns/livingston/categories/news/articles/livingston-is-one-of-the-fastest-growing-towns-in

People are leaving because of the taxes on single family homes. I keep hearing that houses in the Quarry are being sold at losses by well heeled folks who can easily afford to pay but do not want to pay $28K in taxes for few services. More people will start thinking about leaving because of violence in CHS and wondering about what 57% +/- of their tax payment is buying for their children'e education. South Orange is on a course to cater to high density housing, primarily rental, for people who are living here to commute to New York before having children. Education costs, the largest portion of the tax bill, are deflected by PILOTs to these high density projects and fall on single family homes. On top of this, South Orange homeowners are subsidizing Ashley Market and SOPAC. Enjoy both places because if you own property in South Orange, then you are being de facto taxed to keep both going. LL: The current BOT and new Village President are committed to holding this course so why are you surprised intelligent folks are leaving?

But realtors are reporting bidding wars on houses in other parts of town, and so far every large new building has been filled.

From the article linked: "The Star-Ledger and other affiliated state newspapers, released estimates that all but one Essex County town has seen a growth in population since 2010."

The paragraph quoted in the OP is unattributed, and contradicts the information reported to be in the census estimates, which are estimates and not the result of any actual count. Sounds to me like just bad NJ.com reporting, nothing new.

There will always be a market for housing in South Orange and Maplewood as long as the inventory is cheaper than purchasing in the City. Period.

Following a link in the article, the census bureau estimates there are 164 more people living in South Orange in 2014 than there were in 2010. Irvington grew faster than Milburn or Livingston, and the only towns growing faster than Maplewood were Orange, East Orange, and Newark. the quote from the article in the OP makes no sense in light of the data.

According to the Census Bureau, while population decreased from 2000 tp 2010' it was up 1% from 2010 to July 2014.

http://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2015/06/what_are_the_fastest_growing_towns_in_essex_county.html

Lots of investment going on in Maplewood, South Orange, Orange, Harrison and Newark...anyone that rides the train to NY Penn regularly is watching many buildings going up.

Towns with transit are hot.

The housing market in South Orange is very strong. Many houses are selling over the asking price and the average days on the market is 58.

http://sueadler.com/market-stats/south-orange-market-stats-april-2015/

So I guess the take away from this is that our hyperlocal media is better than their hyperlocal medium?

The paragraphs quoted above are not the opinion of any official or expert. Not based on any statistics. Simply the opinion of the reporter with no basis in fact . Yyet passed off as news, which surely is not

Perhaps South Orange's hyperlocal could take a look at the "facts" stated in that story and do some legwork on their own, then report on it? At the very least, a call to NJ.com is in order, since they evidently provided the information on which this writer relied. Where did they get that "information"?

That is, however, extremely lazy reporting. Essentially, Livingston's reporter quoted figures from another newspaper. If they had taken Journalism 101, they would know you are supposed to go to a primary source, in this case an organization that provides census figures and actually does the research, NOT a secondary source such as another reporter.

Bottom line: If it's an error, call them on it and make some noise.

The author of the article in the OP certainly got it wrong when he included South Orange in the list of towns that people are fleeing. Yes , taxes are high, but they're no higher than Maplewood's. South Orange falls right into the category of walkable communities with excellent transit to NYC which are becoming increasingly attractive.

but truth, of course, not only buys into it but adds his own research, which is that it is the intelligent folks who are leaving. I assume he/she is staying.

South Orange is very much in demand as a place to live. Yes, a lot of seniors and empty nesters sell their homes and move, some to escape the taxes and some for a different lifestyle. But, right now there seem to be more people who want to move into South Orange than want to move out because multiple offers are common, and although the housing market usually slows down markedly after Memorial Day, there still seem to be more buyers than sellers.

Regarding sales in the former quarry ( Now the Manors). That development first came up for sale at the very very top of the market. In this market crash, property values at the high end of the market fell the most so The Manors got hit with a double whammy. Additionally buyers pay a significant premium for new construction. So, in a market where prices are not going up, what would happen is that values on new construction would decline as the property ages. Most people are not aware of that because most of the time, the real estate market is going up.

So, there may be some original owners there now who bought at the very top and if they sold it could be at a loss but in spite of the strong market. That is still the case with other homeowners through out Maplewood and South Orange and even Short Hills and Summit who paid too much to win wild bidding wars at the top of the last bubble.

My hunch (not as a real estate agent) is that it is very possible that populations in South Orange could be lower than they were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Families are much smaller now, so houses that once may have housed 2 parents 4 or 5 children and a live in housekeeper might now be home to 3 or 4 people.

Although houses were much smaller back then, and now people seem to want much larger homes... so the large homes that held five or six back then might seem just right to a family of three or four now. I'm always amazed when I watch a home improvement show or House Hunters to hear people saying they have to have space for this and space for that, all of which results in a house about twice the size of what I grew up in.

Editor's Note: TAP into Livingston has revised this story since its original publication to correct a misstatement regarding South Orange, NJ.

They didn't actually correct anything. They just took the whole paragraph out with no additional explanation

That is a correction. They took out the wrong information, didn't they?

It was also wrong about Orange, East Orange, and Newark (as well as implicitly racist) but they don't have MOL to defend them!

PeggyC said:
That is a correction. They took out the wrong information, didn't they?

They just deleted the information Peggy. If they wanted to correct it they would've said at the bottom why they took it out and why they put it there in the first place Was it a statistical error or editors error? Sloppy sloppy reporting.plenty of people will have see the original article and never come back to see the deletion/correction. They will assume what they originally read is correct

I agree it's sloppy reporting, but I wouldn't really expect them to explain any further than they did. At least no one else will see the incorrect information.

I just read the whole thing as kind of saying it's better to live in Livingston than in the towns closer to Newark. Agree that is opinion and not factual reporting, but it's hardly the first time any of us have heard this opinion.

According to the Census Bureau, there are approximately 500 more residents of South Orange now than there were in 1980.

Newspapers, in general, are terrible at anything involving numbers. What's weird is that everyone's more or less ok with numerical illiteracy, but god forbid a reporter make a grammar error...

Also in this space -- I look forward to the next edition of "Essex County taxes are extremely high" that just quotes dollar amounts and doesn't provide tax rates or comparisons to other similar localities.

.

The Star-Ledger had a story last year about the increasing attractiveness of towns with walkable downtowns and easy access to transit. Maplewood is mentioned, but the featured town is Morristown. The article talks about the redevelopment that is taking place in Morristown.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/06/sprawl_withdrawal_young_nj_residents_push_toward_cities_and_away_from_suburbia.html

The second link is an article (2013) about the biggest redevelopment project in Morristown in four years. This development is PILOTed. As can be seen in the drawing in the linked story, the development is quite similar to Third/Valley. Jonathan Rose was the Morristown planner at the time. Jonathan Rose moved away from planning and into development.

http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2013/05/morristowns_speedwell_redevelo.html

Contrary to a post above which says that PILOTs are costing the taxpayers money and that South Orange taxpayers are subsidizing PILOTed projects such as Ashley Market, PILOTs do not result in other taxpayers having to pay more in taxes than they would have paid had the development paid normal taxes. This is because South Orange shares a school system with Maplewood and the share of each town's school taxes is based upon the allocation of the equalized tax values, based upon the total of equalized tax values of each town. PILOTs are not included in the equalized tax value of South Orange, and thus SO's share of school taxes is not increased. This is coupled with the fact that South Orange receives approximately twice the amount of municipal taxes than it would have received with normal taxes. The effect of these two factors results in a bottom line of no additional taxes being paid by taxpayers than would have been paid had the development paid normal taxes. Despite many explanations of this over the years, including a presentation at SOPAC in 2006 where by use of a spreadsheet it was demostrated that there is no cost to the taxpayers, and the taxpayers are not subsidizing PILOTs, people still try to say that other taxpayers are subsidizing PILOTs. I certainly heard this during the most recent election. In fact, the revenue received from PILOts decreases the tax burden to South Orange taxpayers. To say that people are moving away form South Orange because of the additional taxes caused by PILOTs is sheer nonsense.

btw- Morristown shares a school system with Morris Township, and its share of school taxes is based on exactly the same method as used by South Orange and Maplewood.

eta - Between 2000 and 2010, South Orange had a decline in population of 766 (4.5%.) Between 2010 and 2014, South Orange had an increase of 164. That's a swing of 960, which is pretty impressive.

None of the development going on in South Orange was done with the senior population in mind. PILOT's would not be necessary if the the new development was age restricted to 55+, and thus no burden on the school system, and if the housing were made age appropriate to suit the needs of an aging population. Towns like South Orange have never really cared about its residents being able to age in place. On more than one occasion I have heard older residents told to move out of town if they cannot afford the big house or it no longer suits their needs. And many have since their are few in-town alternatives. Other towns have figured this out. Unfortunately, South orange has not.

and Jayjay brings up the discussion again although it has been shown over and over very few kids live in the new buildings. It was also pointed out many people over age 55 live in those buildings. Jay

I think South Orange cares and did care - but the problem is towns need to fund all their own services including the schools. Unless the state changes the funding methods for the schools towns like S. Orange will have no choice but to let seniors who can no longer afford the property taxes move out. This is a symptom of the property tax system.

Basically in NJ other towns have NOT figured this out and most towns in NJ and other high property tax states have the exact same problem.

jayjay said:
None of the development going on in South Orange was done with the senior population in mind. PILOT's would not be necessary if the the new development was age restricted to 55+, and thus no burden on the school system, and if the housing were made age appropriate to suit the needs of an aging population. Towns like South Orange have never really cared about its residents being able to age in place. On more than one occasion I have heard older residents told to move out of town if they cannot afford the big house or it no longer suits their needs. And many have since their are few in-town alternatives. Other towns have figured this out. Unfortunately, South orange has not.

Well, at least it got JayJay to leave