Two housing topics — preventing evictions and building walkable communities — were in the spotlight Thursday in Hartford, with separate press conferences on the issues held before the Housing Committee’s second meeting of the legislative session.
In one press conference, housing advocates pushed for a proposal to require landlords to provide a reason when they evict renters.
The Connecticut Tenants Union, Make the Road Connecticut and other tenants’ rights advocates are supporting an extension of a law that prohibits no-fault evictions against certain populations such as people with disabilities and senior citizens. They’re asking lawmakers to extend those protections to all renters.
In a separate event, advocates introduced the latest version of a plan to increase density near public transportation hubs. Desegregate Connecticut, a program of the Regional Plan Association, is pushing for the bill they call “Work, Live, Ride” to increase density around public transportation.
“When not enough people have affordable homes, that actually has an impact,” said Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, at the Desegregate press conference. “The American Dream has become elusive in Connecticut because people cannot find homes.”
The proposals come as Connecticut, along with the rest of the United States, faces what experts say is an affordable housing crisis.
Thousands of Connecticut renters are paying more than a third of their income to housing costs, and the state lacks more than 92,000 units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest income renters.
Spending higher percentages of income on rent can make it hard for families to build up savings accounts. It also means they often spend less on necessities such as health care or food and struggle to cover emergency expenses.
Responses to Thursday’s conferences and discussion in the Housing Committee meeting gave a hint at some of the opposition the proposals are likely to face. Landlord groups said the eviction reforms would make it harder for them to run their businesses, and one of the major groups that opposed statewide zoning reform last session issued a statement opposing the Work, Live, Ride proposal.
The Desegregate plan includes incentives to encourage more affordable housing and would increase housing supply. The eviction proposal would make it harder for landlords to evict people at the end of leases so that they can more easily increase rents, advocates say.
Top lawmakers on the Housing Committee are aiming to address some of these issues in the coming session, although they’ve said it’s unlikely that some of the sweeping zoning reform policies proposed last session will return during a short session and in an election year.
In its first two meetings, the Housing Committee primarily raised “bill concepts,” or ideas for bills, typically without set bill language. Raising a bill concept means that it will likely get a public hearing.
Committee members on Thursday also voted to work on Senate Bill 6, a placeholder bill meant to encompass several housing issues. The bill from Senate Democratic leadership is called “An Act Concerning Housing,” and has little information.
Lawmakers sometimes propose these types of bills in the hopes of filling them in with a variety of topics later. It can be easier with limited time to pass one larger bill rather than several small bills.
Republicans objected to the bill Thursday, saying they oppose the use of what they call “dummy bills,” without set language.
Eviction reform
The eviction reform bill, which advocates call “just cause eviction,” means that landlords would have to give a reason if they want to evict someone. Under current law, most people can be evicted even if they’re caught up on rent.
The proposal would expand protections that already exist for certain groups such as senior citizens and people with disabilities. Expanding this type of protection has been proposed in past legislative sessions but hasn’t passed.
[Stay updated on Connecticut housing trends: Sign up for Ginny Monk’s newsletter, Home State]
Make the Road member Imelda Barajas said during their press conference that housing instability has worsened over the past couple of years as rents rise.
“For more than two years, we have been collectively going through housing instability nonstop,” Barajas said through a translator. “We have learned from neighbors about all the invisible walls that people build for us every day to keep us working with our heads down in the shadows and with a gag in our mouths to continue exploiting us.”
There were more than 20,600 evictions filed in Connecticut in 2023, and about 11% of those were lapse-of-time evictions, meaning the lease term was up.
Advocates think that expanding protections would mean cutting down on that 11% and more forced move-outs not included in that percentage. Many tenants move out when they get warning letters or other notice from their landlord, before an eviction is filed, said Sarah White, an attorney at the Connecticut Fair Housing Center.
Tenants also face lapse-of-time evictions as retaliatory measures for joining a tenant union, complaining about housing conditions or reporting problems to city government, said Luke Melonakos-Harrison, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union.
Kelly DeMatteo, a landlord and president of the Connecticut Apartment Association, said during an interview that she uses lapse-of-time evictions when a tenant is disruptive to their neighbors.
“I mean, landlords aren’t in the business of wanting to evict tenants,” DeMatteo said. “We need tenants in the apartments to pay the rent, to pay the bills and to continue to put money back into the asset and make it better.”
She added that she doesn’t think those types of evictions happen often. A statement from the Apartment Association called lapse-of-time evictions “a very important tool used as a last resort,” to prevent “improper or illegal activity.”
John Souza, president of the Connecticut Coalition of Property Owners, said in an interview that he thinks in some instances, a lapse-of-time eviction can be easier on the tenant than filing court records with complaints about the specific things they’ve done wrong.
“Why do these people think they have the right to live in an apartment forever?,” Souza said. “The only solution to all these housing problems is more housing.”
He said he’s used that type of eviction process for tenants who cause problems and if he needs to remodel an apartment.
Melonakos-Harrison said during the press conference that it’s important to understand that under the reform, evictions would still be allowed, but reason would have to be provided.
“It’s just preventing arbitrary, baseless evictions that have no justification behind them,” Melonakos-Harrison said.
Souza said he supports adjustments to zoning to make it easier to build more apartments, but not the eviction reform.
Transit-oriented development
One of the measures proposed this year is to increase residential density around train and bus stations. The land-use concept known as transit-oriented development aims to have walkable communities where people can easily access public transit.
Supporters have said the measure would help offer housing to workers, making it easier for business to grow in Connecticut.
“We have a moral obligation to support our workforce,” said Sen. MD Rahman, D-Manchester, and co-chair of the Planning and Development Committee. “We have a moral obligation to support our seniors … Let’s go work.”
Desegregate Connecticut has proposed similar legislation in past sessions, and this one is reminiscent of last year’s proposal.
The bill includes more environmental protections, additional affordability incentives and more support for infrastructure such as water and sewer than last year’s measure, said Pete Harrison, director of Desegregate Connecticut.
It also uses certain state funds to incentivize towns to work with the state to create transit-oriented development.
Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, and co-chair of the Planning and Development Committee, said she’d heard about support for the measure from town planners across the state.
“We’ve got to keep focusing on ‘Yes, let’s prioritize folks who are willing to get on board with this and get them moving as fast as we possibly can, because we need it yesterday,’” Kavros DeGraw said.
During the last legislative session, lawmakers approved measures to strengthen the state’s Office of Responsible Growth. The office is key to the Work, Live, Ride proposal and would offer technical support to towns as well as help them find funding for infrastructure improvements to accommodate increased density.
Opponents of similar proposals have said that they dilute local control and impose cookie-cutter solutions on towns with individual needs.
“Our lawmakers should be creating laws that aid and empower our towns and provide more equitable allocations of state and federal grants, vouchers and low income housing tax credits to communities of all sizes to spur affordable development,” a statement from the group 169Strong said. “Instead this bill removes local control, limits funding resources to communities unless they relent to onerous state mandated guidelines, thus disincentivizing towns from affordable development.”
The group has opposed several zoning reforms that housing experts said would increase housing stock and improve affordability.
“This is about incentivizing the communities that we know want to do this, but need help to do it,” Harrison said. “And we also think to the folks that maybe don’t want to do this: the politics are going to shift. When communities are building really cool stuff, they’re growing the tax base. Businesses and manufacturers are going there because employees are living there. That’s going to change the local politics in some communities that are pretty resistant right now.”