(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi.

- Good evening and thanks for joining us on this Friday night.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories we're digging into later in the broadcast.

New Jersey residents may be taking home more in their paycheck, but do the numbers add up when it comes to the cost of living?

Speaking of spending, PASAIC may be a model for other cities when it comes to rent control.

We'll tell you what they're doing.

And finally, there's a solar rush in the state.

Our reporting finds residents racing to get solar panels on their homes before a federal tax credit expires.

But first, though, a few of today's top headlines.

The state is taking a major step to overhaul how it serves our veterans.

Governor Murphy on Thursday signed a law creating a new standalone Department of Veterans Affairs, a move that comes after both federal and state investigations found substandard care and ongoing neglect at state-run veterans homes, where nearly 200 residents died during the early days of the pandemic.

The U.S. Justice Department said the conditions violated constitutional rights and the state paid out millions in legal settlements, prompting a bipartisan call for reforms.

Until now, services for New Jersey veterans were housed under the same department that also managed military operations and the state's National Guard.

The new law though splits the agency in two with separate leadership at each.

Governor Murphy already named his pick to lead the new Veterans Affairs Agency, tapping Army veteran Vincent Solomeno, who currently serves as the Deputy Commissioner at the department.

Also tonight, Pathriders heading between Jersey City and Newark this weekend will need to plan ahead once again.

Rail service between Journal Square and Newark Penn Station will be shut down, replaced by shuttle buses, while crews begin six weekends of intensive track repairs through November.

It's all part of the $430 million Path Forward program, which is aimed at modernizing the line.

Now, this phase of work includes installing new track switches to make train movement faster and more flexible, ultimately boosting reliability.

The disruptions, though, will hit both PATH and New Jersey Transit riders who depend on easy transfers to Newark.

The shutdown follows back-to-back closures at Hoboken Terminal for interlocking repairs that lasted nearly a month this summer after aging track equipment caused a minor derailment in July.

For their part, transit officials are stressing that each closure brings longer term improvements, but it's unclear just how much short-term pain riders are willing to endure.

And coming up, we take a look at the true cost of living in the Garden State and why the latest numbers say we're making more money, but also spending more.

Major funding for NJ Spotlight News is provided in part by NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and by the PSCG Foundation.

- Well, new data from the U.S. Census Bureau paints a complicated picture of life in the Garden State.

Median household income is among the highest in the country.

New Jersey, for example, is tied for second place with Maryland and Massachusetts, but the gains in wages are overshadowed by the high costs to live here.

That's no surprise, particularly when it comes to housing.

Analysts say both mortgage payments and rent prices have skyrocketed, which could become more problematic as federal support for core safety net programs is being pulled back.

Our senior writer Colleen O'Day is with us now to explain.

Colleen, good to see you.

So a lot of this we may read and say, well, that's no surprise.

We're living it.

But where do we stand?

How do we stack up when it comes to wages?

Where are they at?

Yeah, you know, wages are up and that's saying something because, you know, during COVID and for two years after that, wages were actually down.

You know, we know there was, there were job losses, there were a lot of issues.

So wages are up and they're up a statistically significant amount and they're up over inflation adjusted wages.

So that's good.

What does that mean?

Give us a dollars and cents.

Right.

So they're up about $1,600 over 2023.

We're looking at 2024 numbers.

This is over 2023.

That's about 1.5 percent.

And again, that's over an inflation adjusted number.

So that's significant.

That's a real number.

- Yeah, I mean at the same time, you report that income inequality is down.

So what's behind that?

What's driving that?

Are there state policies, programs that are adding to that trend?

- Yeah, and the change in income inequality is pretty significant 'cause we were about the 10th worst in the country and we're down to about the 20th worst.

We're moving into the center of the pack, which is very significant.

You know, the state has done a number of things.

Primarily the biggest would be the minimum wage, which increased to $15 a few years ago and now is indexed to inflation.

So it's up now to $15.49 and it's going to go up again, we assume, in 2026 because inflation is up again.

So that's really a big thing.

And even with that, there are a lot of places that are paying more because they need to attract people.

Another thing has been the child tax credit, which can be as high as $1,000 for those at the lowest income levels.

But even if you've got $80,000 in income, you can get a credit.

That's really helpful too to people.

So those are a couple of the big ones, as well as our safety net programs, which are much broader than, you know, at the federal level.

- So that's the good news.

On the flip side of this, housing affordability is about as bad as it's been in recent memory.

How much are people paying?

- It just keeps getting worse, right?

So it's about $2,800 now a month if you have a mortgage, and that's an increase of $120 a month just over 2023.

- And that's when you factor in things like your homeowners insurance, property taxes, all of that.

- Right, that's the full cost of owning your home.

For renters, the median rent was measured at $1,800.

If you factor that out, that's also an increase, that's an 8% increase over 2023.

- Also, you're hard-pressed to find something to rent for $1,800, let's just be clear about that.

- This is just a median, so this would take into account people who may be living in a relative's place and paying a reduced amount of rent.

- Right, and then what are we looking at in terms of who's bearing that, the burden of these costs the most?

- I mean, it's always those at the lowest income level.

And advocates place this figure, if you're paying about 30% of your income for housing costs, you're considered housing burdened.

It's just, it's too much to pay, 'cause you've gotta obviously pay for food and clothing and all of these other things.

So if, when we're looking at the numbers in New Jersey, about a third of homeowners meet that 30% level.

For renters, it's much worse.

42% of renters are spending about 30%, 35% of their income on housing.

There's no money to do anything else.

Yeah, I mean, they're already living beyond their means just to live here.

OK, I want to get back to those safety net programs that you mentioned.

What's at risk?

We know that there are federal cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, potentially more on the horizon.

New Jersey has taken some steps to safeguard some of those programs, but none of it is a guarantee.

What's at risk if those were to scale back?

Yeah, you know, so if you consider that you are a person, a renter, and you're already paying 30% of your income, 35%, now suddenly you can't get food assistance or you can't get health insurance.

So what we've seen in other numbers from this data is that the percentage of people who are uninsured in New Jersey increased at the same time.

It increased since 2022 by about 1%, about 7.7% of people no insurance at all.

That's only going to go up and that's because of those cuts that you're talking about that are coming out of the federal government.

- Yeah, and we know when people don't have health insurance, that's when these emergencies happen, these high-cost medical bills come.

I mean, that's what often ends people, tends to drive people into claiming bankruptcy or losing their home, their mortgages, going into foreclosure.

What else did you find in digging through this data as it pertains to affordability here and the true cost of living here?

- Yeah, you know, another thing that we look at is the poverty level, and we are really, we're one state, but we're kind of two states.

I mean, the gap is huge.

Hunterdon County, about 4% of people living in poverty.

It's one of the wealthiest counties in the state.

Hudson County, more than 15% of people are living in poverty.

And when we talk about poverty, we're talking about the federal poverty limit, which is only about $31,000 for a family of four.

Imagine trying to live on that much money and feed four people.

It's just hard to believe.

Which we should note, of course, Hudson County, much more densely populated than Hunterdon, but still the numbers, they add up when it comes to just how many people are.

And of course, I know many advocates have noted that that poverty number should be much higher for New Jersey.

All right, you can find Colleen's reporting on this topic and all of your other reporting, of which there is a lot on our website, njspotlightnews.org.

Colleen, good to see you.

Thanks for coming in as always.

Thanks very much, Brie, for having me.

In a move that could serve as a model for other cities grappling with rising rents, PASAIC just adopted one of the strongest rent control measures in the state, approving a new law that limits rent increases to 3% a year, and it eliminates a loophole that often leads to steep rent hikes when tenants move out.

Supporters say it's a major win for working class families trying to stay in their homes, but critics warn it'll stifle investment in housing.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagas has more on what the change means for renters and landlords.

With this new ordinance that has been passed, I can now breathe easily and I do feel a big sense of relief.

-Alberta Jimenez is a Pasek resident who's been fighting for a rent control ordinance that the city council just passed earlier this month.

It caps the amount that a landlord can raise rent on tenants at 3% per year.

-This passed unanimously.

Most of you passed it.

-The council enacted a similar ordinance in February, capping rent increases at 6%, but Community Advocacy Group Make the Road New Jersey fought for the city to lower that cap even further, citing a housing crisis that they say is pushing some 10,000 families close to homelessness.

-I've heard people deciding on, you know, are they going to pay their medical bills this month or are they going to pay the rent?

Are they going to put groceries on the table?

They might not have enough and you know that kind of has led to many evictions throughout the years So we've seen a huge jump from like 2022 to 2024 where it's almost tripled the eviction cases in court Jimenez has seen rent increases year over year and says she's been scared that she could be next on that eviction list every year the landlord has been increasing my rent of about $100 including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's been incredibly difficult for me and my family because I am a mother of four younger daughters and I have to choose between paying for our food or meals and or paying for my rent and if I don't pay the rent completely I am charged with late fees that additionally add to my stress and burden me.

But while Jimenez can breathe a sigh of relief that her rent won't go up by more than 3% Nick Kikis with the New Jersey Apartment Association which represents landlords believes ordinances like this only end up hurting renters in the long run and the association opposes rent control of any kind.

Rent control doesn't reflect the economics of housing.

It discourages investment in housing and by doing so it creates a shortage of supply and disinvestment in the housing supply that we already have.

And he says these caps don't reflect the cost that landlords have to bear.

The cost of labor has gone up significantly.

Insurance costs, just since the pandemic alone, have doubled.

Rising utility costs, you know, those are going up tremendously.

Appliance costs, cost of materials.

So we're seeing all of these cost drivers on the expense side, and it's important that owners be able to recapture those costs through rents, because otherwise we'll either see a decline in the quality of housing, or we're going to see owners struggle to provide services and stay in business.

The Passaic Ordinance does allow owners to apply for higher increases if they've made capital improvements or other major repairs to a housing unit, but the law now forbids what's known as "vacancy decontrol," where a landlord can increase the rent to any amount once a unit becomes vacant.

There had been abuses in the past as well, like, you know, landlords trying to raise rent twice a year.

A landlord could say, like, you know, it's time for you to move out, and then they could raise around $500 for the new tenant, and the new tenant wouldn't know what the past, you know, rent was.

A bill was passed by the Assembly earlier this year that would establish a state standard for unconscionable rent increases in light of the growing eviction and homelessness rates in New Jersey over the last few years.

That bill hasn't moved in the Senate, though.

Kikis says there are better ways to address affordability.

Rent control is often kind of viewed as a stopgap for high housing costs, but really the solution is to address the underlying cost drivers and not just impose a cap on rents.

So what New Jersey really should do is focus on increasing the supply of both market rate housing as well as affordable housing because we need to have both market rate and affordable housing built together in order to make this work.

While state lawmakers argue over how to increase the affordable housing supply, Make the Road is working on establishing rent control ordinances in other cities like Perth Amboy and Elizabeth.

In Passaic, I'm Joanna Gagis, NJ Spotlight News.

The air inside Atlantic City's casinos may be more toxic than many people realize.

An investigation by NJ Advanced Media found that air quality in all nine casinos significantly exceeded EPA safety thresholds, even in the designated non-smoking areas.

Now, according to their findings, workers and gamblers are breathing in harmful levels of fine particulate matter that can penetrate deep into the lungs and have been linked to cancer, heart disease and respiratory illnesses.

To conduct the test, NJ Advance Media used an air beam monitor during hour-long visits conducted on Friday afternoons and evenings in both smoking and non-smoking areas of the casinos.

They clocked levels that would be considered hazardous by EPA standards.

Experts say that's not a lab calibrated device, but it is among the best equipment available to do a reading.

Indoor smoking has been banned in most public places in New Jersey for decades, but casinos remain an exemption.

Workers and public health experts have raised concerns about secondhand smoke exposure, but industry groups and unions have pushed back on efforts to ban smoking there outright.

Support for the medical report is provided by Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.

In our Spotlight on Business report tonight, time is running out for homeowners who want to take advantage of a federal solar tax credit, and it's triggering a rush in New Jersey.

Now the 30% tax break is set to stop by the end of the year after Congress voted to let the incentives sunset, causing demand for solar quotes in New Jersey to more than double this summer.

The credit offsets about $9,000 of the cost for a rooftop system.

I spoke with our Washington, D.C. correspondent Ben Hulak about what it means for the broader industry and energy policies in the U.S.

So Ben, this tax credit was supposed to last until 2032.

Why then did Congress decide to cut it nearly a decade short?

The short answer, the technical answer is Republicans were looking for ways to pay for their broader tax breaks for corporations.

This was part, if we remember back to the summer, there was a lot of debate here on the Hill about how to pass and how to pay for this massive multi-trillion dollar bill, now law.

And this was an item that Republicans wanted.

So they essentially went through lots of Biden era tax breaks for renewables, for wind, for solar, and phased them out early in order to pay for their broader package.

So I know you write, you report that demand has just gone through the roof, this really lit a fire under people.

What does that look like on the ground?

I mean, how many people are actually calling and requesting quotes?

And we should note, this is, you know, really for residential homes.

Right.

So I talked with two people I'll mention.

Lyle Rollins, who's a business owner, owns his own solar company.

And he said salespeople are just swamped.

And then I talked with a woman named Emily Walker, who works for a company called EnergySage.

EnergySage crunches data and numbers about solar demand.

Their numbers show that just within New Jersey, from June to July, people requesting quotes for what it would cost to put solar on their homes skyrocketed 109%.

So that's a huge jump.

And that coincides with Congress debating this fraud or law.

So the interest in New Jersey is not an outlier in this.

There is a race nationwide.

If you are interested in putting solar on your home, you are a pedal to the metal now.

Yeah, 109%.

That's significant.

I mean, okay, if I'm a homeowner and I want to get this installed, connected before the deadline, is that even possible?

A, and what do I need to know then?

Right.

It is possible.

You should probably do it now.

And I actually talked with a solar advocate in Philadelphia, a woman named Elowen Corby, with a solar advocacy group called Vote Solar.

And this is what she said.

If you're interested in going solar, you should start soon.

The process of getting solar is much more than the two or three days it can take to put the actual solar on your roof.

It includes permitting.

It includes a number of logistical steps that I would recommend not rushing.

You also want to make sure that you're taking the time to make sure you're working with a reputable installer, someone who you trust, someone who's done a lot of work in the community.

So start now, because there can be more steps than you know.

Starting five days before the deadline isn't going to work out the way you hope it will.

Yeah, and so Ben, then what happens if someone is not connected in time for the deadline?

If someone is not connected, then they are likely out this tax credit, which on average could defray about $9,000 worth of the cost.

So it costs tens of thousands of dollars to install panels on your home.

That's a ballpark figure.

Maybe about $30,000 is a good sort of rule of thumb.

This $9,000 chunk of that money could be massive and could be the difference between someone saying yes, I'd like to take this plunge and go solar and try to maybe in theory go off the grid and be my own little electrical island or going back and canceling those plans.

So it's a big deal.

How does all of this play into the broader energy policy that we're seeing from the White House and also some retroactive tariffs that could really impact the industry as you note?

How does this all play together?

The tenor on science and on renewables out of this administration has been extremely aggressive and negative.

The Energy Secretary actually recently assembled an anti-climate science report that purported to debunk well-established climate science.

That is, of course, not true.

Humans are warming the planet by burning fossil fuels, oil, coal, and gas.

But this is sort of one tendril, this anti-solar push.

It's one tendril out of Congress, out of the Republican-led administration to slow efforts to clean up the power grid, to decarbonize the broader U.S. energy system.

And it's really, I would say, it just fits a pattern in a lot of ways.

And a lot of the money, remember, Congress is in charge of writing tax law and administrations carry out tax law.

But this cut that we've been talking about, Bri, is just one of many that this Congress has doled out so far.

Yeah.

And I wonder just about the long term impact here.

What did some of the advocates say who you spoke with about how this affects the industry in the long term and maybe even some of these policies in the long term.

You know the appetite for it all.

Right.

It's really put a damper on the appetite.

There is a lot of frenetic energy in this moment to get people hooked up to the grid to get people on solar before the year is out.

But also I should mention a commercial scale solar tax credit was phased out will be phased out next summer.

And that was also a Biden era tax credit that was going to go for about a decade.

And now they're nine years roughly short of that original target.

And so people are scrambling on the commercial solar side as well.

And then of course we haven't really delved into this but tariffs are another massive sort of axe hanging over this industry.

The administration has floated retroactive tariffs which would be extremely destabilizing for the industry and could go back two years and charge importers on what is already on U.S. shores.

So there are a lot of serious landmines here for solar in the U.S. >> Yeah, no doubt.

You can read all of Ben's reporting, including on this on our website, NJspotlightnews.org.

Ben, thanks as always.

>> Of course.

Support for the Business Report is provided by the Newark Alliance Presents the 2025 Halsey Fest, featuring the vibrancy of Newark's Arts and Education District and Halsey Street.

Halsey, a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey Fest schedule is available at halseynwk.com.

- And finally tonight, one of the Jersey Shore's most unique events is back this weekend.

The sixth annual See Here Now Festival kicks off Saturday in Asbury Park for a two-day celebration of music, art, and surfing.

The festival features more than two dozen bands that'll perform across multiple stages on the city's North Beach and one stage in Bradley Park.

Now, crews have been setting up for days in anticipation of big crowds and even bigger acts, including the likes of Blink-182, Hosier, and the iconic Lenny Kravitz, along with a long list of other national and local musicians.

And it's not just about the music.

Professional surfers will hit the waves in live competitions, or you could walk the boardwalk to check out the Artist Showcase.

Thousands are expected to attend, so organizers warn to expect traffic, packed trains, and limited parking in the area this weekend.

There's also going to be some local road closures, so plan ahead.

Luckily, though, the weather will be on your side.

That's going to do it for us this week.

A reminder, though, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can always follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

And if you want to help support the programming public media brings you and keep stations like this one thriving, head to njspotlightnews.org/donate.

I'm Briana Vannozzi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

Enjoy this beautiful weekend.

We'll see you right back here on Monday.

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At the PSEG Foundation, through volunteer hours, partnerships, and our other contributions, we're committed to empowering communities.

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