To address concerns about affordability and ever-rising property-tax bills, Gov. Phil Murphy and lawmakers added money to the state budget earlier this year to fund bigger residential property-tax relief benefits.
Now Murphy is making a personal appeal to any New Jersey resident who has yet to apply for those relief benefits, which will total as much as $1,500 for thousands of individuals.
During an interview Tuesday on NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi, Murphy said nearly half of the more than 2 million New Jersey residents who are estimated to be eligible to receive benefits under the state’s newly enacted “Anchor” relief program have submitted their applications to the state.
“We want to make sure everybody out there knows about it and, if they’re eligible, (signs) up for it,” Murphy said about the Anchor program during the interview.
Murphy’s public outreach comes just days after his administration announced the application deadline for the program — which offers bigger relief benefits to a broader pool of New Jersey residents compared to the state’s prior relief efforts — has been extended by about a month, to Jan. 31.
More information about the Anchor program is available at https://nj.gov/ or by calling 1-888-238-1233.
Of the more than 2 million New Jersey residents who are eligible, some 900,000 are tenants who had been locked out of state-funded relief efforts for roughly a decade. Under Anchor, renters making up to $150,000 are eligible to receive benefits totaling $450.
In addition, the Murphy administration has also announced in recent days new rules that will ensure more tenants can qualify for the Anchor program by addressing technical provisions that kept some tenants from being eligible.
Meanwhile, for nearly 900,000 homeowners making up to $150,000 annually, the benefits will total $1,500 under Anchor. And another nearly 300,000 homeowners making over $150,000 and up to $250,000 annually can receive benefits worth $1,000 if they apply before the deadline.
The Anchor benefits will be paid out in late spring via check or direct deposit, according to the administration.
“This is cash on the barrel,” Murphy said during the interview.
Hedge against high taxes
In all, the average New Jersey property-tax bill increased last year to a record high of $9,284, according to data compiled by the Department of Community Affairs.
And while the rate of annual growth has been slowing in recent years, average bills have gone up collectively by more than $1,500 overall since 2011, before adjusting for inflation, according to a recent NJ Spotlight News analysis.
Last week, top legislative leaders who spoke at the New Jersey League of Municipalities’ annual convention highlighted the Anchor program when they were asked pointed questions about affordability and what the state is doing to ease the burden of rising property taxes.
In effect, Anchor is replacing the Homestead program, which had been offered to homeowners for over a decade in New Jersey to keep pace with local property tax bills that are among the nation’s highest. The Anchor nickname is derived from the new program’s formal title, which is “Affordable New Jersey Communities for Homeowners and Renters.”
And with more than $2 billion earmarked for the Anchor program in the 2023 fiscal year, Murphy and lawmakers are now funding such direct property-tax relief benefits at a level not seen in over a decade in New Jersey.
The Anchor nickname is derived from the program’s formal title, which is “Affordable New Jersey Communities for Homeowners and Renters.”
The administration began sending out the application information for Anchor in September, but Murphy said a marketing and advertising campaign is soon being launched in the run-up to the Jan. 31 deadline for applications.
In addition to allowing renters to once again qualify, the rule changes announced by the administration last week will ensure tenants who live in a unit that was established under a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, agreement are eligible for benefits.
Under Anchor, benefits will be paid out via direct deposit or check, meaning they will no longer appear as a direct credit that lowers quarterly property-tax bills, as they did under Homestead.
Countervailing winds
How effective the Anchor relief benefits will be for the bigger pool of homeowners and renters who qualify for them remains a lingering question since the benefits won’t be paid out until late spring, which provides more time for inflation and the annual creeping up of tax bills themselves to eat into the nominal value of the benefits.
Moreover, benefits are based on gross income earned in 2019, and tax bills paid during the same year, which may be less than more recent incomes and tax bills.
Meanwhile, even as Anchor is still being rolled out, many county and municipal governments across the state are facing higher employee health insurance costs due, in part, to inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic, leading many to warn those costs could bring on a new round of property tax increases next year unless the state steps in to provide direct cash assistance.
During Tuesday’s interview, Murphy stressed the size of the expanded benefits as he spoke about concerns about inflation, saying it would result in at least a 10% to 11% effective reduction in the tax bills for many homeowners.
“These are big numbers,” Murphy said.
