Jersey City has had a great deal of growth in the last two decades, but that growth has split the City, increasingly leaving many residents behind.At the same time, despite the growth and desirability of Jersey City, the current Administration has not attracted any new anchor institutions and small businesses are struggling from high costs and endless red tape. The result is that even as Jersey City’s population has grown by roughly 30% in the last 15 years, the number of jobs here has been virtually stagnant for almost a decade, and fewer than 20% of our residents also work in the City.
So Jersey City is increasingly at risk of being split between two worlds—an expensive bedroom community for New York, and the remaining underinvested neighborhoods where residents have few opportunities to work here and increasingly cannot afford to stay in the City they love. But this path is not inevitable—it is the result of deliberate choices to hand over the trajectory of the City to developers, disinterest in helping businesses and companies get off the ground and grow in Jersey City, and the neglect of investment in poorer, predominantly minority neighborhoods.
As Mayor, James Solomon will fight to stop this slide, open up opportunities to live and work across the city for residents of all backgrounds, and bring investment to communities that have not seen the benefits of the last decade of growth. Jersey City still has the chance to become a model for inclusive growth that maintains our diversity, while becoming a true beacon of economic opportunity.
1. Take back control of the planning and growth of the City from developers, to reduce housing costs and create more jobs for residents.
2. Create thousands of homegrown job opportunities by attracting anchor institutions and supporting small businesses.
3. Aggressively promote economic revitalization across the City, especially in the communities that have been left out of Jersey City’s recent boom.
