The Majority Leader’s Affordable Housing Roundtable, a task force of legislators and key stakeholders from Connecticut municipalities, housing agencies and private groups, held their first meeting to set the table for future discussions on how Connecticut can expand its affordable housing stock.
Over the last three years, most conversations and debates at the Capitol have focused on local zoning requirements, creating an often-times bitter battle between state lawmakers looking to overhaul municipal zoning regulations to make it easier to build and local-control advocates decrying a one-size-fits-all mandate from the state.
But according to members of the Affordable Housing Roundtable, the barriers to more affordable housing units stretches farther than zoning alone: transportation, sewer capacity, state environmental regulations, property taxes, jobs, the size of new homes, rising interest rates and soaring constructions costs are also limiting the ability to create more housing.
“It’s very hard to build affordable housing when no part of it is affordable, none of it.” said Cindy Butts, CEO of Connecticut Realtors. “Land isn’t affordable, construction materials aren’t affordable, labor isn’t affordable, borrowing isn’t affordable, and yet we want affordability. So sometimes we think we’re building something known as less expensive and expensive is entirely out of reach.”
Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi says that transportation issues are key to creating more affordable housing in Ridgefield, particularly around transit areas.
“Transportation would be key to getting people to move into our community,” Marconi said. “The issue is when we have people move into town, we don’t have the transportation to get them back to their jobs if they’re moving out of the cities or some of the more highly dense populations, and that’s true for the Northwest sections, Northeast, Southeast. As you look around our state, the current buildout is happening in cities where there is good transportation, where there are a lot of jobs.”
Betsy Gara, president of the Council of Small Towns (COST), says that wastewater management also has to be a first step in the conversation. Large multi-unit housing developments often require sewer access, but many small towns don’t have sewers and installation can be very costly.
“We really don’t have a lot of detail as to what those challenges are, whether those can be addressed and how they can be addressed,” Gara said. “It is a very difficult issue to address but there is some federal and state funding that can be targeted to resolving that issue.”
Francis Pickering, executive director of the Western Connecticut Council of Governments, says housing affordability is also partially driven by the market, particularly labor and material costs which have gone up nationally.
“There are a number of costs that are really hard for a state or local government to get their hands on to control, but they are driving affordability housing challenges,” Pickering said, adding that the group should look more into converting larger, “oversized” homes into multi-family units. “The cheapest home to build, is a home you don’t have to build because it’s already there.”
Added into the mix is rising interest rates, part of the federal government’s attempt to slow down inflation. The higher interest rates not only create a cost barrier for homebuyers but also keep more current homeowners from selling and buying another home.
David McCarthy, president of Heritage Housing, an affordable housing developer, says that the current lack of housing inventory in Connecticut is “transitory” as opposed to issues that are more “chronic.”
“The low housing sale inventory is probably more of a transitory issue because interest rates shot up very quickly over the last year and a lot of homeowners who might otherwise sell are hoping they can wait it out,” McCarthy said. “That might be different from a chronic housing issue such as housing costs being high percentage of family’s budgets at the lower income spectrum. That has been the case for nearly, probably the entire twenty years I’ve been working on affordable housing. It’s gotten worse, but it’s been a chronic issue.”
The round table on affordable housing was created under a large housing bill that went too far for local-control advocates in creating a “fair share” methodology to determine each municipality’s fair share of affordable housing and not far enough for housing advocates who pushed for a fair share bill and transit-oriented development bill.
The task force, chaired by House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, is tasked with examining Connecticut’s current affordable housing practices, successful models from other states, and the potential to convert government or commercial property into affordable housing, along with other issues that may arise.
The group will then submit an annual report to the legislature’s Housing Committee by January 1, 2024, and every January thereafter, according to the bill.
Rojas says he has come to the conclusion that the topic is “incredibly complex” but he welcomes the work of the round table and the commitment of its members to give lawmakers a strategic direction to move.
Both he and Duff noted that some problems come down to “chicken or the egg” arguments, particularly when it comes to the impact of housing on jobs and transportation. “Those chicken and egg issues are very real, and we can’t get too caught up in them, but we do have to recognize that they are real,” Rojas said.
Duff noted that recently four affordable housing slots became available for low-income residents that resulted in over 3,000 applications.
“We’re far past the polite conversations,” Duff said. “We have to get into the fact of actually doing something and being a little uncomfortable and putting some shovels in the ground on this, on housing, because we will fail as a state if we do not build more housing across the state.”
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We make it complex. Stop putting “affordable” before housing. There is just housing. Many factors affect cost, but zoning is certainly a factor in land cost and it is controlled locally as it should be so that decisions are made close to voters and if you don’t like it then you can run for zoning commission or move. Towns can experiment and offer housing vouchers on whatever terms the townspeople are willing to financially support. There would just be housing. No one would necessarily know who was receiving aid. No stigma. No central planning from Hartford.
An article in a rival online newspaper noted a census count of about 3,015 “un-housed” people in Connecticut. Further down it quoted experts who said CT needs 89,000 affordable housing units. Is this the new math? Who are these “experts?”
Ridgefield has a 2% poverty rate and a waiting list of 16 people for affordable housing, yet the politicians and lobbyists put forth 4 bills to the legislature that ignored the complexity of building multi-unit housing in small towns. Transportation, sewerage, job availability were all ignored as one-size-fits-all demands by Hartford, with control by Hartford, were presented. They didn’t pass this time around, but they did manage to stick “fair share” into SB998, a bill that had nothing to do with affordable housing, and then pass it in the middle of the night. None of this sits well with the residents of CT.
Most small town residents moved there because they LIKE living in a small town. We don’t want our small towns to become cities with their high rise apartments, traffic congestion, large buses clogging the roads, sewer issues, crime, higher taxes, etc. Instead of destroying CT’s small towns, the Democrat leadership should look at cleaning up the cities we already have, i.e. crack down on ALL crime, clean up school curriculum so kids graduate with marketable skills and are literate, open charter schools if necessary…….get rid of surcharges on businesses so CT attracts companies instead of chasing them away, and above all, make sure your welfare programs are encouraging fathers to stay in the house. Children need fathers, not “baby-daddies.”
Couldn’t agree more with Linda Lavelle…the Democrat leadership needs to address cleaning up Hatford, Bridgeport, New Haven – and even Torrington – all of them need better service and transportation – and building should be promoted in these areas. Make the cities viable and the people will follow.