Housing Committee members heard familiar arguments Tuesday on a wide-ranging bill that aims to increase affordable housing supply in Connecticut. While opponents argued for local control and less density, advocates spoke about a need to alleviate the fallout from the affordable housing crisis.
Senate Bill 6, the Senate Democrats’ priority bill on housing this session, would also allow housing authorities to build in other towns, give more money to the homelessness response system and add funding to the state’s Rental Assistance Program.
Advocates of the bill spoke to a dire need for more affordable housing. People are struggling to find a place to live, they said, and it’s difficult for people with low incomes to live in many communities in the state. Some also said it’s hard for employers to hire people because there isn’t enough housing for staff.
“We’re never going to solve homelessness until we create more housing,” said Kara Capone, chief executive officer at Community Housing Advocates. “ … What we have right now is a supply and demand issue. There’s simply not enough supply to go around. There certainly isn’t enough affordable supply to go around.”
Opponents argued that expanding housing authorities’ jurisdictions beyond the town they’re located in would dilute local control and asked that the state make changes to Connecticut’s housing choice voucher program instead. Some said they didn’t want to see more density in their towns, while others said they were concerned about environmental issues.
“We have to have respect for people who came to Connecticut for a particular way of life,” said Barry Michelson, with the Stamford Neighborhoods Coalition. “Yes, we will always need a housing safety net. But there has to be some respect for the folks who live here, who pay the bills, who pay the taxes here.”
Connecticut lacks about 92,500 units of housing that are affordable and available for its lowest income renters. Thousands pay more than a third of their income to rent, and homelessness is rising. Lack of housing affordability disproportionately affects people of color.
“The quantity and affordability of housing is not a standalone problem,” said Senate Majority Leader Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. “Rather, it is interconnected with education, health and safety. Without a roof over their heads, students will face a greater difficulty focusing on school. Families will be more susceptible to illness. Children and adults will never know the true safety and stability. It is thus imperative that we address the lack of housing in general in this state, and more specifically, the lack of affordable housing.”
The committee also heard testimony from many who asked that it pass a bill to study 8-30g, a decades-old law that offers certain court remedies to developers whose proposals for affordable housing are denied.
Those who spoke in favor of the bill said the law hasn’t worked as intended. It allows developers to appeal when local zoning commissions deny housing proposals and shifts the burden of proof to the municipality to prove that they denied the proposal for health or safety reasons. Towns are exempt from the law when 10% of their housing is designated affordable.
Senate Bill 6
S.B. 6 would put $50 million annually into a new Housing Growth Fund. Towns that encourage more housing that the state wants to see — housing near public transit, multi-family housing, and mixed-use development — would have access to grants from the fund.
It also offers tax credits to help turn commercial properties into residential, one of the topics discussed last year during a roundtable group meeting. Converting commercial properties into residential has been discussed more nationally as more people work from home since the pandemic.
It also would reduce certain taxes for real property purchased to develop affordable housing.
The bill would also allocate an additional $20 million to homelessness services, and an additional $25 million for the Rental Assistance Program.
The homelessness response system has been strained as homelessness increases and people stay longer in shelters. The system has less turnover as it grows increasingly difficult for people to find housing.
Advocates have also said they’re concerned the Department of Housing’s Rental Assistance Program, which covers a portion of low-income tenants’ rents, won’t be able to have as many people in the program as rents rise and vouchers get more expensive.
Thousands of people who qualify for the program are also on waitlists and don’t have access to a housing voucher.
But Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration has set strict fiscal guardrails to limit spending. He’s said it improves the financial health of the state, while advocates say it means people don’t have all the services they need.
Politics
Housing advocates largely spoke in favor of S.B. 6, saying it would help create the housing the state desperately needs.
“This proposal for a Housing Growth Fund is intended to reward municipalities playing a meaningful role in generating the housing needed to meet the state’s affordable housing crisis with access to a $50 million municipal support fund,” Erin Boggs, executive director for the Open Communities Alliance, wrote in public testimony. “This type of state support for municipalities that are being true partners sends a clear message to municipalities that support for the overall needs of the state will be rewarded.”
Leaders from some larger cities that have the bulk of the state’s designated affordable housing also supported the bill.
“We believe in this incentive-based approach because we know that municipalities face unique circumstances and value the ability to make community-based decisions,” wrote Karen Dubois-Walton, president of New Haven’s Elm City Communities, in her public testimony. “This approach will provide municipalities with the flexibility to decide if and how they want to contribute to this shared issue and will reward the municipalities that choose to do so.”
But many from suburban and rural areas of the state spoke against parts of the proposal, particularly the measure that would allow housing authorities to build in towns other than their own.
This would essentially mean the housing authorities would serve as developers, and advocates said would help offer more affordable housing so people have access to more communities. But opponents said it weakens local control.
“This is an approach the state has not used — and should not use,” wrote Francis Pickering, executive director at the Western Council of Governments. “Enabling municipal departments and agencies to expand beyond the body politic that governs and funds them, without the mutual agreement of the communities they are expanding into, is a recipe for loss of accountability, service duplication, and conflict.”
WestCOG supports or is neutral to the rest of the bill, Pickering’s testimony said.
CT 169 Strong, a group that has opposed measures before the Housing Committee in the past, sent an email describing some of their objections to S.B. 6. The group said they want to see more focus on an ability to move housing vouchers from town to town, and noted that the towns likely to get the most from the housing growth fund already have state and federal resources, among other concerns.
“When most of these cities already receive almost all of the grants, 9% LIHTC, state loans for affordable development, and almost all of the voucher allocations, why do they need yet another funding source to deny others in the state from creating affordable housing?,” they wrote in their email.
Republican lawmakers and some members of the group also spoke in favor of House Bill 5333, which proposes a study on how 8-30g court remedies affect municipalities. A similar bill was proposed in 2022, and housing advocates said it was a veiled attack on the decades-old law.
Maria Weingarten, one of the 169Strong founders, said it’s hard for towns such as New Canaan to reach the 10% mark that would exempt them from 8-30g because they don’t get as many resources, such as housing vouchers.
“I think we need to have a more comprehensive look at how the vouchers are allocated and also the portability of these vouchers and maybe consider making these vouchers centralized through a state housing authority so that there’s one waitlist so that everybody’s on that one list,” Weingarten said.
Municipalities are subject to certain federal restrictions on how and where vouchers can be used.
Housing attorney Rafie Podolsky said during Tuesday’s hearing that the 8-30g law is working as intended and has led to many new housing developments in the state.
“It has been an extremely beneficial statute in our judgment,” he said.