They might not have gotten rid of tenure and collective bargaining in NJ, but they sure got rid of a lot of unionized policemen, firemen, and teachers. It had reached a breaking point where many people who couldn’t sell their homes were simply letting the banks have them back rather than come up with $10K+ per year for what really isn’t a good standard of living.
In other parts of the country $10K in property taxes means a mansion; in NJ it means an average house on a small piece of land with crappy road surfaces. I’m sure banks starting sounding the alarm over the past few years, because there is still a glut of empty houses here. Building has stopped because the developers are competing with these empty homes, many fairly new, that have their prices keep dropping. The reality is that if they gave the houses away for free, nobody is going to be saddled with that tax bill while our incomes steadily drop.
What an ungodly mess we’re in.