The Connecticut Senate kicked off the last day of the legislative session with passage of a wide-ranging housing bill that aims to encourage towns to allow more apartments and condominiums, and requires landlords to provide advance notice of rental increases, among other measures.
The bill may be the most substantial housing bill passed this session, despite housing advocates’ efforts to get other tenants’ rights and land use regulation bills through.
House Bill 5474 includes a range of measures to alleviate Connecticut’s affordable housing crisis. It’s largely a compilation of bills from the Housing and Planning and Development committees this session.
“The action that we need to take in order to move our state forward with more housing has to be done and has to be done at a rapid pace,” said Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk. “We can no longer just inch along in our state. We’ve got to move by feet and by miles.”
H.B. 5474 passed the Senate with a bipartisan vote — 32 in favor and four against after a few hours of debate.
It aims to address some of the factors that experts have said contributed to a lack of affordable housing in Connecticut including sprawl driven by large lot sizes for housing and lots of single-family housing, short-term rentals and lack of warning about rising rents.
Connecticut lacks more than 92,000 units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest-income renters, a shortage experts say is primarily driven by restrictive local zoning policies.
Many of the measures included in the bill are opt-ins for towns and aim to encourage more housing development through incentives rather than mandates. The debate over whether incentive-based approaches or statewide mandates has underlied the zoning and land use debate in Connecticut for years.
Supporters of statewide reform tend to argue that towns have had their chance to build more housing and have consistently resisted development. Those who push for incentive-based approaches often say it’s best to leave zoning in local control.
“It’s also divorcing and distancing the people who live and work in these towns from decision-making,” said Sen. Jeff Gordon, R-Woodstock, during debate on the bill Wednesday. “The state is intervening, it’s intercalating itself into that decision-making. That’s very, very concerning to me.”
The sweeping legislation offers municipalities one-quarter of an 8-30g point for each unit of so-called “middle housing” that they build “as-of-right,” or without a special hearing before the zoning commission. The 8-30g law offers court remedies to developers whose proposals for affordable housing are denied, and has drawn political ire from Republicans for the past few years. Towns can earn points toward temporary exemptions from the law by building affordable housing.
Middle housing refers to lighter density developments such as duplexes, triplexes and townhomes. The middle housing developments wouldn’t be required to have affordability elements under the legislation.
The bill would require that towns allow developers to turn abandoned nursing homes into affordable housing without a special zoning hearing. The conversions can only happen if the existing building doesn’t need to be demolished and the developer can’t change the building’s footprint.
It also mandates that landlords offer tenants at least 45 days of notice ahead of a rent increase. For month-to-month leases, it would require notice the same as the length of the lease. Current law doesn’t have time requirements for notice of rent increases.
The bill also offers more flexibility for the state’s rental assistance program. It allows participants to use the state Department of Housing maximum amount, as is now used, or to consider the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s fair market rent amount, whichever is higher. This could allow people with state housing assistance more options for apartments.
It would also give towns more explicit authority to adopt ordinances about the operating and licensing of short-term rental properties. Many towns across the country, particularly those that draw more tourist crowds, are struggling with a housing shortage and seeing homes taken off the market by people operating short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb or VRBO.
The bill also requires the Department of Economic Development to send out annual questionnaires about applications to build more housing, whether they’re approved, how many are denied and any destruction of existing housing. Lawmakers hope this would offer better information about approvals and denials of housing at the local level.
Planning and Development ranking member Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich, said during the debate that because the bill included a wide range of ideas, it would be difficult to make a decision. Fazio ultimately voted in favor.
“This is one of those votes that I think is actually a difficult one to make a decision on because there are so many different policies in the bill,” Fazio said. “Some are good, some are bad.”
Debate in the House on the bill earlier this week was limited. Democrats accepted two Republican amendments, including one that would make it easier for towns to achieve temporary breaks from the 8-30g law.
[RELATED: CT House passes expansive housing bill, with nod to New Canaan]
The Senate debate on the last day went longer than the House. It’s fairly common for debate to lag toward the end of session, as the minority party tries to keep Democrats from having the time to call certain bills.
Conversation sometimes veers away from the underlying point of the bill, as evidenced by an exchange Wednesday in the Senate.
Gordon went through a detailed list of questions on the bill, and asked Planning and Development chair Sen. MD Rahman, D-Manchester, more than once for a list of the state’s nursing homes as they considered the piece of the bill that would allow abandoned facilities to be turned into apartments.
“We are helping towns continue collecting the tax and also helping reduce the abandoned property in the town that looks really bad,” Rahman said. “Most importantly, if this bill passes, it will create more housing that’s desperately needed in our state.”
Gordon asked again about the list.
“I think my good senator is missing the point,” Rahman said. “The point is, as previously answered, I don’t have the list.”
Gordon asked if they could take a break to get the list.
“My good senator you have a lot of experience, I’m surprised you don’t have the list,” Rahman said. “But yes I don’t have it. I’m not a lawyer and I’m not a researcher. I don’t have any list and I don’t know if I can get the list for him.”
The exchange ended shortly afterwards.
The bill next heads to Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk for his signature.