New Jersey's Solution to its Low Income Housing Problem

I don't know whether I got this right, but my conspecifics from the Garden State have informed me that New Jersey values class diversity so much that it mandates that each town provide for a quota of low and middle income housing. The idea is that the people benefit from contact with different classes. The lower classes get to learn from the example of the virtuous bourgeoisie and avoid "ghetto effects" associated with "concentrated poverty", and the other classes are reminded of the existence of their inferiors to whom they owe noblesse oblige.

But wait! It turns out that affluent towns can pay other towns to handle their low and middle income housing. Upper Saddle River can pay Newark to build more low income housing and house Upper Saddle River's meaner would-be denizens.

But how is it that low and middle income folks came to be priced out of the tonier confines in the first place? It seems that a number of these towns have enacted restrictive zoning ordinances that render it unprofitable to erect anything other than a stately manse. Two acre lot mimimums, 12% house to lot ratios, restrictions on multi-family structures all keep out the riff raff as do exorbitant property tax rates. These are not private covenants; these are coercive zoning and building laws.

So, let's get it straight. Government interference helps to create an artificial shortage of low income housing in certain areas; therefore, government must legislate to fix this problem by adding on another layer of market distorting rules. On top of this, there is rent control.