At the country’s largest pro-housing conference this week, there was an undercurrent of discontent over the veto of the most important housing bill to pass the state legislature in years, particularly as attendees from red states touted advancements in their zoning policies.

This year’s YIMBYtown conference in New Haven was organized by Desegregate Connecticut, which advocated for House Bill 5002, the measure vetoed this summer by Connecticut’s Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont. He was not invited to the conference, which began Sunday and ended on Tuesday.

The conference’s name stands for “Yes In My Back Yard,” a counter to the “Not in My Back Yard” argument against development of more apartments largely in single-family home neighborhoods.

Connecticut lawmakers spoke on a Monday panel, following a keynote speech from Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong, of North Dakota, and other speakers focused on legislative wins for the movement in the red states of Texas, Arkansas and Florida.

“Permitting reform is good because you can build stuff faster, and you can build it better, and you can do it quicker, and you can allow communities to adapt to whatever’s happening on the stage,” Armstrong said during his keynote speech Monday.

North Dakota saw a population increase and the need to build more housing in the wake of an oil industry boom in the early 2000s. The state has legalized tiny homes and accessory dwelling units, manufactured housing and put state money toward building more affordable housing, among other initiatives.

The conference comes just months after Lamont vetoed H.B. 5002, a sweeping bill that aimed to improve the affordability and accessibility of housing. The bill tackled issues including zoning, transit-oriented development, parking, homelessness and fair rent commissions.

Town officials and some residents objected to measures in the bill that required municipalities to plan and zone for a set number of units of affordable housing and the removal of minimum off-street parking mandates for smaller apartment buildings.

Lamont said he wanted to get towns on board with housing legislation when he vetoed the measure. He said he’d call a special session to pass a new bill, but that date hasn’t been set.

Organizers with Desegregate Connecticut asked the close to 1,000 people registered for YIMBYtown to film videos encouraging Lamont, whose name drew boos from the crowd, to call a special session.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said during a panel that other states “are eating our lunches on housing.”

“They are moving exponentially on housing, and anything that we are doing compared to that is modest,” Duff said. “If we tried to do what Texas or Florida has done, I mean, we would be running out of the building.”

Earlier this year, the Florida legislature passed its “Live Local Act,” that increases housing opportunities, including by allowing more building of smaller apartments and establishing a tax credit program for housing construction. 

In its last legislative session, the Texas legislature passed seven bills on a range of housing and zoning topics on minimum lot sizes for housing, allowing conversion of commercial and office space to residential and allowing more unrelated people to live in the same home.

A measure to require towns to allow the conversion of commercial space to residential was in the vetoed Connecticut bill.

Red states have largely passed their zoning and housing legislation with Republican support based on the idea that landowners should have the right to do what they want with their land, speakers said.

In Connecticut, lawmakers said Lamont was under public pressure to veto the bill from outside groups and some constituents from Fairfield County.

“It’s not the entire county, and I don’t want to blame an entire county for it, when it really is a small subset of people who have a very narrow worldview of what their community should look like,” said Planning and Development co-chair Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon. “However, we are politicians. And so is the governor, and it is very difficult when you are a political person to be hearing from the people in your backyard in volume.”

Lamont’s spokesman has said that the governor wasn’t responding to political pressure but to the voices of residents and whether local leaders would be able to achieve the goals of the bill.

The lawmakers offered few details on what the details of a new bill will be, but said they want to see a strong measure.

“I think he [Lamont] feels very strongly that he can bring some of these chief elected officials along,” said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford. “We will see if that’s true. And even if it isn’t, I still think we can arrive at something that is going to move an agenda forward.”

Duff said one of the good things to come about from the veto was that people across the state are talking more about housing policy.

“I don’t know if everybody would have come back to the table again had there not been that kind of — what’s the word I’m looking for?” Duff asked, pausing.

“Outrage, pushback, outcry,” members of the audience offered.

“Reaction,” Duff finished.