This story is part of CT Mirror Explains, an ongoing effort to distill our wide-ranging reporting into a "what you need to know" format and provide practical information to our readers.

A controversial bill aimed at creating more housing and development near public transportation stops is before the Connecticut General Assembly again, after passing in the House last year but failing to get a vote in the Senate. 

Dubbed Work, Live, Ride by the housing advocacy group DesegregateCT, this measure would prioritize communities with qualifying transit-oriented districts when doling out discretionary infrastructure funding or grants such as the Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) or the Urban Act Grant Program, both of which help municipalities invest in economic revitalization.

Opponents of the bill argue it would force their towns to accept zoning changes without giving residents or local officials a say.

Meanwhile, lawmakers supporting the bill have denied this claim and publicly criticized what they called the spread of misinformation about the Work, Live, Ride measure during a public hearing.  

Here’s what to know about transit-oriented districts and the latest version of the bill.

What is a transit-oriented district?

A qualifying transit-oriented district, in this case, means an area within a half-mile radius of a train or bus station that a city or town has designated for mixed-use and more dense development.

Such a district, if the municipality designates it for transit-oriented development, would allow for the construction of middle housing — cottage clusters, townhomes or duplexes with nine or fewer units — as well as high-density housing with 10 or more units.

Under this bill, the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) would set statewide guidelines for lot size, parking requirements, floor-to-area ratios, and other developmental guidelines within qualifying transit-oriented districts.

What’s new this year?

One of the primary changes between the 2024 version of Work, Live, Ride (House Bill 5390) and this year’s version (House Bill 6831) is the creation of a new category that would qualify for priority funding: transit-adjacent communities. This measure, which had been in some iterations of the bill in previous years, would allow cities or towns without a train or bus station to receive preference in funding if they border a municipality with such a station, provided they create their own transit-oriented district.

“Everywhere in the state has some part of their town that they want to see development in; it’s an old mill, it’s a downtown area that needs revitalization. So we took that to heart and said, ‘OK, let’s allow that transit-adjacent piece to come back into it,’” said Pete Harrison, the Connecticut director of the Regional Plan Association.

The new version of the bill also added a section creating a public water and sewer rehabilitation or expansion account within the state’s general fund, which would go toward improving water infrastructure in transit-oriented districts.

The bill also moves certain decisions away from State Responsible Growth Coordinator Rebecca Augur, who serves under the Intergovernmental Policy and Planning Division of OPM, to a newly formed interagency council on housing development.

This council would include Augur alongside one designee each from OPM, the Department of Housing, the Department of Economic and Community Development, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the Department of Public Health, the Department of Transportation, the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority, and the Municipal Redevelopment Authority.

H.B. 6831 also more specifically defines discretionary infrastructure funding and places less of an emphasis on accessory dwelling units.

What’s the biggest point of controversy?

Opponents of the bill say that allowing the state to set land use standards in qualifying transit-oriented districts would force cities to accept one-size-fits-all zoning changes without local input.

H.B. 6831 does include language prohibiting OPM from unilaterally declaring an area as a qualifying transit-oriented district. The bill specifies that a city must ask the secretary to designate such an area as qualifying for priority funding at a state level, and that areas that are already sufficiently dense can be grandfathered in at the town’s request, but don’t have to be.

Still, opponents say it’s not enough. And members of the group Connecticut 169 Strong said because another section of the law includes a list of requirements needed for a district to qualify, they worried that even if a town were grandfathered in, it would have to change some of its zoning to comply with that list.

Many also cite the bill’s system of allocating priority funding as an issue, saying it would implicitly force cities that didn’t follow OPM’s guidelines into a corner.

“Prioritizing those funds in the draft bill language to be allocated to TOD projects first and foremost would lock out small towns from accessing available funds, as they would be directed toward TOD-only projects,” Robert Phillips, executive director of the Northwest Hills Council of Governments, wrote in testimony against the bill. “Therefore, they simply would have to find other funding sources, delay projects or outright cancel them without being able to rely on this expected annual grant funding available to them.”

Lawmakers and proponents of the bill have rejected these claims. Planning and Development Committee co-chair Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, has argued much of the controversy around this year’s bill has been fabricated, and said that the final version of the bill is still being negotiated.

“I think that significantly there are people who are anti-housing who manufactured controversy… There’s a lot of flat-out lying about what is or isn’t in the bill that has happened, both last year and this year,” Kavros DeGraw said. “I think if there’s any concern it’s around some of what is considered ‘priority funding,’—the STEAP funding and the Urban Act funding—and we’re still kind of noodling that. That’s not necessarily a done deal.”