Lawmakers on Tuesday laid out the political landscape for housing issues this year: a short session during an election year that could make bills hard to pass, especially on contentious issues.
Fairfield County Talks Housing, a series of community conversations about housing, kicked off the year with a panel of key legislators on housing issues to preview the legislative session. Housing Committee co-chair Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, House Majority Leader Rep. Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, spoke on the panel.
“We know that the lack of housing is holding our state back economically,” Duff said. “We know that if you talk to folks that housing is a huge issue for people, even those who have homes. It is a huge issue because you think about parents — they worry about their kids not being able to find a place to live or grandparents who want to stay in the same community as their grandchildren.”
A shortage of affordable housing has gained more attention nationally and in Connecticut over the past few years. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted many inequities in housing affordability.
Since then, rents have risen and homelessness is up. There’s a low supply of both apartments and single-family houses.
Some research estimates that Connecticut lacks more than 92,000 units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest income renters, a number that’s grown over the past couple of years. Housing is typically considered affordable if people are spending up to a third of their income on rent.
Housing experts have said that much of the lack of affordable housing stems from restrictive local zoning ordinances that make it hard to build the multi-family housing that’s typically more affordable to people with low incomes.
Last session was largely focused on housing issues. Advocates and lawmakers worked on a couple of measures that would have meant widespread zoning reforms across the state. Those efforts fell short.
The two-year bonding package included almost a billion dollars in housing-related funding, and lawmakers instead passed a housing omnibus bill focused primarily on renters’ rights. On Tuesday, lawmakers said they wanted to look into zoning measures again, including bills that would encourage more residential density near public transit, but they likely won’t take big swings like last session.
Lawmakers said zoning reform would likely be the most effective way to increase the state’s affordable housing stock, but that with political opposition, they were looking at other options to chip away at the problem.
“One of the things that we’ve continued to hear about are these needs for incentives,” Rojas said. “Knowing the political difficulty and the political reality that we have around doing something more extensive around zoning and reducing the regulatory burdens, which make it really difficult for housing to be produced, there has been this conversation around incentives.”
Republicans and some Democrats, particularly those from Fairfield County, have opposed zoning reform measures in the past. When opposing such bills, officials have said that they would erode local control or impose one-size-fits-all solutions on towns with different needs.
Some local officials say they don’t have the infrastructure — particularly sewer and water capacity — to accommodate large, multi-family developments.
Moore said some of that opposition could make it hard to pass some housing bills this session.
“I question whether we have the political will to be able to move such controversial items in an election year, but I personally don’t feel like we should let that stop us,” Moore said. “I think there’s enough people who care about what we’re doing that will support us if we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons.”
Lawmakers said they need more supporters to come to public hearings and submit testimony on bills.
“We need your help to get through because the opponents of any kind of sensible legislation, as much of the vocal minority that they are, they are loud and they actually help defeat legislation,” Duff said. “That is good, common-sense legislation that will help move our state forward to help grow our state.”
Rojas said many housing issues can become politically weaponized.
“Political will is certainly one of them,” he said, referring to barriers to passing legislation. “The politics of fear is another. I think opponents of housing policy, generally, not just nimbyism, but the actual weaponization of housing policy and actually vilifying certain groups of people.”
Social media conversation and public hearings often grew tense last session, particularly during debates around zoning. Some posted about or mentioned “15-minute cities” during discussions. The term has become a central part of conspiracy theories about climate change and freedom around the world.
The original idea was to plan cities so that people could travel only short distances to get to the places they need to go. But online conversation shifted to fears of a dystopian future where people are forced to stay in their homes.
Lawmakers said they thought they’d made progress over the past several months with bipartisan meetings of a roundtable group that’s been focused on finding solutions to Connecticut’s affordable housing problem.
It’s not clear yet whether the meetings have been successful at finding bipartisan solutions, they said.
Rojas said he wants to give more support to public housing authorities, legalize building of lower-density multi-family such as duplexes and quadplexes and look at ways to put money from a conveyance tax back into local communities.
Duff said that instead of trying to force communities that are hesitant to build more housing, he thinks it might be an option to invest more resources into cities and towns that are building more housing. It’s similar to an approach used in Nevada, which the roundtable group heard a presentation about on Monday.
Moore said she thinks work can be done on eviction reform, homelessness services funding and sewer capacity issues, among other issues.
“We need to ensure that we’re planning for and building enough homes and apartments to accommodate our population. No single entity or sector can get this done alone,” said Mendi Blue Paca, president and chief executive officer at Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, in an introduction to the panel. “Housing must be a shared priority of government, business, philanthropy, nonprofits and residents. We cannot solve this crisis without smart public policy and legislative leadership.”