HGA led a project team including subconsultants WRT, Arup, and Execu-Tech on the development of a redevelopment plan for the Housing Authority of the City of Hoboken. This planning effort built on prior work HGA undertook with several other partners that began in 2021. The Plan was adopted in December 2023 after a thorough public engagement, design, and planning process. In 2024, the Plan was recognized with a New Jersey Future Smart Growth Award.

The Housing Authority of the City of Hoboken Redevelopment Plan encompasses an approximately 22 acre area in the City of Hoboken. The Housing Authority’s properties are generally concentrated in the southwest corner of the city adjacent to the municipal boundary with Jersey City and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail alignment. The Housing Authority’s buildings were constructed between the 1950s and 1970s and include 1,354 residential units that house over 2,000 low-income residents in the city. As Hoboken has developed over the last several decades and its demographics have changed, an economic, racial, and cultural divide has become more pronounced. The Redevelopment Plan represents the culmination of nearly three years of planning and engagement work that involved building trust and confidence and developing a workable plan to ensure that residents’ rights are respected as needed physical transformation occurs.

The Plan is wholly focused on ensuring that the Hoboken Housing Authority is able to continue its mission of providing affordable housing to low-income residents. The residents of the Housing Authority are disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities in the city and have substantially lower incomes than the city median. It is anticipated that the redevelopment project will have the following benefits:

• Creating safer, healthier affordable housing units than the aging and deteriorating housing authority buildings.

• Providing opportunities for indoor and outdoor recreation for residents and the public

• Creating safe, dedicated walking and bicycling connections to a broader city-wide network and to the nearby Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station at 2nd Street.

• Enhancing flood resilience by providing new buildings that comply with current flood hazard regulations and best practices and incorporate modern stormwater management strategies where no such facilities currently exist.

The Plan involved extensive community engagement through public meetings, online communication, regular updates through the Housing Authority Board and its communication channels, and city briefings. The planning and engagement process were open to the public but focused on the Housing Authority’s residents as the primary stakeholders. Three large-scale public meetings along with a series of smaller targeted outreach and listening sessions were held during the initial visioning process, and several additional public meetings and stakeholder interviews were conducted while developing the Redevelopment Plan. Building trust and getting buy-in from the Housing Authority’s residents was critical to bringing the plan to fruition.