Anecdotally, I see a lot of people moving to jersey and then getting the cheapest studio apartments they can find in the city for Tuesday morning to Thursday afternoon flopping in hybrid work requirements. It’s really the worst of all possible housing worlds

Good point and I misspoke; “if the population is going down, where is the housing stock?” is what I should have said.

If people are leaving, then where’s the glut of housing stock?

Plainfield is on the Raritan valley train line. If your school is within walk distance of the station, consider looking at train stop towns further west out the line.

How far north are you willing to go? I’m a huge fan of the Highlands area, particularly West Milford. Good schools, lakes, and hiking. Light in the pesky humans.

St. Hubert’s has an amazing puppy training class. Take it or one like it.

Ocean grove. Super quaint place to stay, and a baseball throw away from Asbury Park night life and boardwalk

My Fuji in Suffern is hokey, but the views are pretty cool. Same for Emerald Point at the top of Greenwood Lake

Will see your Howell and raise you an Egg Harbor.

Kennet Square PA / longwood gardens. You can spend two days in the greenhouse alone.

Yes and it’s demonstrable: look at the New York / New Jersey state line. Is Warwick or Greenwood Lake any worse than West Milford or Vernon? No! Exactly the opposite

Then leave. Last I checked, NJ was still growing. So either cope with the fact that while expensive, it’s a popular arrangement, or shut up and get out.

Damn right

I’ve been in Newark since the 90’s, it’s squeaky clean by comparison.

I walk through there pretty much every day. In my brain, this is the office park part of Newark; clean with nothing but tumbleweeds after bank hours

Greenwood lake animal hospital

It depends. There are four west Milfords: lakefront community folks (generally younger families and left leaning-ish) rich reclusive mansion folks (few ball players and anti-social types) honest tradespeople in affordable housing (probably the largest group), and whack job meth heads in shacks (smallest but most noticeable).

It’s not uncommon to see a Ferrari parked next to a rotted out 70’s pick up, and there are as many masons as white collar workers hopping the 197 bus to NY.

In NJ, most schools are pretty good and well documented.

NJ is a funny place with diversity; there are places with excellent cultural diversity and places with excellent economic diversity; there are almost none with both.

Your mode of transportation matters when considering where you work in the city. If you’re uptown, find a bus terminal since the vast majority of commuter routes take you to the PA bus terminal. If you’re downtown, look for a train line that takes you to Hoboken where you can hop a PATH train or Ferry. If you’re midtown, look for a train that gets you to Penn Station. Few actually works around Penn Station, so while popular, it’s mostly a way station to other points.

Your price range is decent, but probably won’t get you walking distance to a train station in one of the bigger towns. I recommend you look at towns along major commuter bus lines if you’re uptown. Passaic county highlands and surrounding area is a fave since it has an express bus terminal in town, the schools are good, and you can get that classic Americana style housing there. A lot of NY expats either love it or can’t handle it. Their brains tend to melt at mountain forest communities with lakes bears and bald eagles everywhere.

I cede the point.

Completely agree that he single-handedly destroyed NJ Transit. It will take another decade or two before it gets back to where it should be, never mind the havoc at the Turnpike Authority and Port Authority. The man was a destroyer of worlds.

But, he had a solid point on the entire ARC program.

He used the funds a few different places including dumping insane cash into the Pulaski Skyway, the wisdom of which, could be a separate and equally galling discussion

You take that argument to the NJ and NY statehouses and the taxpayers. Let me know how it works out for you. I’ll wait here

Part of the reason it was canceled was because it wasn’t going to cost half as much. It was a notoriously underbaked design.

You do you, but I will burn in hell and live in a cardboard box before moving into a HOA. Read the fine print; HOA’s attract Karen driven governance.

A guy once told me layoffs are coming when you start running into mediocre people making $400k, and that’s been a pretty solid benchmark for me.