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He's sent his people back to court, to argue against affordable housing. Again. (AP Photo | Carolyn Kaster)

Chris Christie has spent most of his time in office being obstructionist on affordable housing.



For years, his administration tried to gut the rules that require towns to build homes for lower-income people - the diner waiters, school bus drivers and child care workers that every community depends on. These people need safe neighborhoods with decent schools, too.



But Christie's officials simply refused to do their jobs and make sure towns accommodated them, prompting an epic showdown with the state Supreme Court in March 2015. Its justices couldn't have been clearer: Christie is not emperor, and can't just ignore the landmark Mount Laurel decision that required towns to provide a fair share of affordable housing.

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Yet now, less than two years later, Christie's people are back in court, arguing that towns that did nothing to provide affordable housing during this period of state dysfunction shouldn't have to do anything to make up for their inactivity - or their active efforts to keep lower income people out.



Unreal.



The lull in enforcing affordable housing rules first began 16 years ago, under former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, when the state started delaying the creation of the rules, a key bureaucratic step. But Christie took it to new heights when he tried to entirely shut down the agency responsible for enforcing these rules.



Some towns continued building affordable homes over the years, in a good faith effort to meet their constitutional obligations and the demands of basic fairness. Many that didn't have since agreed to make up for it. More than 85 towns reached agreements with fair housing advocates and developers to build more than 28,000 units; including the biggest suburbs in the state.



Yet Christie's Attorney General is now supporting a lawsuit brought by a smaller group of recalcitrant towns, led by Barnegat, that argues their obligations to create affordable homes from that earlier period have - poof! - disappeared. This is like the kid who shows up without his homework, then claims to the teacher and everybody else who completed it that it was never assigned.



Barnegat is reneging on its 2008 promise to meet its affordable housing obligations because, thanks to the high court's ruling last year, it will now actually have to build these homes. And it is asking the Supreme Court to go along with this, and make a mockery of its own previous ruling. You have to admire the gall.



The League of Municipalities has also signed on to the lawsuit, reversing its prior position that towns need to build these homes. And its case relies on testimony from the same "expert" whose study classified even half-million dollar McMansions as affordable housing. Really?

Do these houses look affordable to you?



We can only hope the state Supreme Court holds the line again here. Valid arguments can be made about the precise number of homes required for any town to meet its obligation, but the idea that those that did nothing or actively tried to exclude low-income people should be now able to get away with it is ludicrous.



Think of the message it would send to all that towns that did meet their obligations: That if you resist affordable housing, you'll be rewarded. Up to 60 percent of towns' obligations would disappear if this legal assault is successful - meaning tens of thousands of families would lose the ability to move into affordable homes in safe communities with good schools.



Will the Supreme Court really let mutinous towns get away with doing nothing as Christie dawdled, given how catastrophic the consequences would be?

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