This third and final article in this series reviews a centerpiece element of the “November Special Session Public Act 25-1,” Connecticut’s new housing law, commonly referred to as HB 8002. (Here are Parts One and Two.)

It looks at the law’s treatment of municipal and regional housing growth plans, including what happened to H.B. 5002’s “fair share” proposal; opportunities for development; and an agenda for the General Assembly in 2026.

At the outset we wish to be clear that as attorneys we represent affordable housing developers, proponents, and advocates who seek to create more affordable housing. However, in ways explained below, we believe the new Act will make affordable housing production more difficult, and thus the General Assembly in 2026 should review and revise the Act to at least remove or ameliorate the obstacles, and otherwise remove exclusionary barriers and positively reform local zoning.

Municipal and regional housing growth plans

The new Act (Sections 4-7) introduces “housing growth plans,” adopted by either a municipality or regional council of governments, of which there are nine: Capitol Region, Northeastern Connecticut, Lower Connecticut River Valley, Western Connecticut, Northwest Hills, Naugatuck Valley, Greater Bridgeport, South Central, and Southeastern.

The Act repeals General Statutes § 8-30j, the part of Public Act 21-29 that mandated every municipality to prepare and file an affordable housing plan by June 2022. Nearly every municipality did so during 2021-2023.

Section 8-30j was less than effective because it only required municipalities to prepare a plan and file it with the state Office of Policy & Management, but gave little guidance as to content or standards. The new Act, however, contains only vague guidance in the nature of aspirations, imposes a complicated review process with lengthy timelines, and has no enforcement mechanisms or penalties. (Co-author Tim Hollister co-chaired a statewide Working Group in 2022-2023 that reviewed and evaluated these plans and in a February 2023 report to the legislature, made substantive and specific recommendations for improvements in the future plans.)

The 2021-2023 plans were supposed to be valid for at least five years. The time, effort, and expense that dozens of municipalities invested in preparing those reports are now superseded. The new Act makes no mention of building upon the 2021-2023 reports. This is at least illogical, because when municipalities prepare the growth plans mandated by the new Act, a natural starting point should be to use what they produced just two or three years ago. The new Act seems to direct municipalities to start from scratch.

The overall housing growth plan process begins with OPM, by December 2026, preparing a statewide housing needs assessment. By June 2027, each regional council must prepare a regional housing needs assessment that includes a “recommended affordable housing goal for each member municipality.” The methodology must include:

• Federal Fair Housing Act “affirmatively furthering” obligation (outreach to those most in need of housing);
• “Appropriate regional metrics” and cost-burden indicators;
• “Appropriate factors for fairly allocating need among municipalities, including proximity to transportation, commercial and industrial zones, employment opportunities; available developable land; and municipality’s share of multi family housing stock”; and
• Adjustments based on income and poverty levels.

Each regional council submits its assessment and recommends the municipal affordable housing goals to OPM, which may not reject them “solely on the basis that such needs assessment or goal may result in a greater number of dwelling units being developed than [OPM] deems adequate.” (We think this means OPM cannot reject the goal because OPM thinks it is too high, but the wording is not clear.) No affordable housing goal may exceed 20 percent of the “occupied dwelling units in such municipality.”

The Act then requires all municipalities in the Capitol, Northeast, Lower Connecticut River Valley, Northwest Hills, and Southeastern Connecticut regions to submit their housing growth plans to OPM by June 2028; and those in the South Central, Greater Bridgeport, Naugatuck Valley, and Western regions to submit by June 2029, and every five years thereafter.

All plans must state “housing growth policies,” which are programs and practices designed to “reduce or remove regulatory constraints on the construction, rehabilitation, repair or maintenance of affordable housing units, such as zoning regulations amendments, fee waivers, tax-fixing agreements, tax abatements, and expedited approvals;” or “actions intended to promote” affordable units such as sewer infrastructure, donations of municipal land, and “agreements with developers” for developments that include affordable units. (This provision says “or” but appears to mean “and.”)

Every plan “shall reduce specific regulatory barriers to the development of dwelling units” and “promote additional dwelling units. . . .” In addition, the plans must:

• Identify specific zones or parcels where affordable housing units that will meet the municipality affordable housing goal can be approved by “summary review;”
• Promote affordable housing units that will be subject to a 40-year restriction that will preserve the units for “persons and families” that earn 30 percent, 50 percent, or 80 percent or less of the statewide or area median income;
• Set forth “strategies” for diversity of unit types, and accessibility in housing for the disabled;
• Explain how the plan addresses “significant disparities in housing needs” and implements the “affirmatively furthering” purposes of the federal Fair Housing Act;
• Contain an inventory of “developable land;”
• Identify infrastructure needs including sewer capacity to achieve the affordable housing goal; and
• Contain an implementation schedule.

The 20 municipalities with the lowest “adjusted equalized net grant list per capita” have a different set of criteria for their plans. They must prioritize preservation of existing affordable units; identify policies that will promote new affordable units “without displacing existing residents;” and identify infrastructure needs of existing residents.

If a municipality proceeds with its own housing growth plan, instead of the regional plan, then at least 90 days before the municipal plan is due to OPM (June 2028 or June 2029, as listed above), it must submit its plan to its regional council, which may propose amendments within 60 days. If the municipality rejects any proposed amendment, it must provide a written explanation to the council. The municipality then submits its plan to OPM, which has 120 days to review and accept or reject.

If OPM rejects the plan, the municipality must submit its plan to the new Council on Housing Development, which must provide written notice, reasons, and needed amendments if it denies. The municipality can then resubmit to the Council within 30 days.

If a municipal plan is approved, the municipality must submit an annual progress report. OPM must publish guidance for such annual reports by March 2026.

An approved plan establishes eligibility for financial awards called “grants-in-aid,” to assist with “construction, improvement, or expansion of public infrastructure.” Grants are based on demonstrated progress” toward the plan’s “housing growth policies and affordable housing goal.”

If a municipality fails to submit a plan within the required time frame, the chief elected officer must give OPM a filing date not more than 30 days out, and the municipality will be ineligible to apply for a four-year moratorium from § 8-30g applications until it files.

Candidly, it is hard to imagine a more convoluted set of review and approval procedures than those listed above, or a more overwhelming task for OPM than providing a meaningful review of 80-plus housing growth plans in 2028 and 2029. The Act’s requirements for these plans include both vaguely-stated aspirations yet direction to specify steps zone by zone, parcel by parcel. How will OPM assess the compliance and details? If it approves all or most plans, it will be seen as a mere rubber stamp, and if it rejects a slew of submissions, it and the legislature will be criticized for not providing adequate guidance.

Moreover, unless we are missing something, the proposed plan preparation, review and approval process contains an impossibility, because it specifies that every municipality must decide within 30 days of receiving its affordable housing goal (June 2027 deadline) whether it will adopt the regional council’s housing growth plan –a plan that is not even due to be prepared and filed until June 2028 and 2029. Again, this is an example of an apparent drafting error that scrutiny could have avoided.

But on top of this procedural morass, the Act spells out four substantive criteria for new municipal and regional housing growth plans that conflict with existing law and are destined to be dysfunctional. The requirements are that every new plan must be “consistent with:”

• The municipality’s Plan of Conservation and Development, adopted under General Statutes § 8-23 and prepared every ten years by the planning commission;
• The regional plan of conservation and development, adopted by the regional council within which the municipality is located;
• The State of Plan of Conservation and Development; and
• A “local water pollution control authority’s” (a/k/a sewer commission) plan, “if applicable.”

How do these requirements conflict with existing law and guarantee dysfunction? Let us count the ways.

For decades, it has been an accepted element of zoning and planning in Connecticut, with narrow exceptions, that municipal plans of development are advisory only as to the adoption of zoning regulations and approval of special permits and site plans.

Our leading land-use law treatise, Connecticut Land Use Law and Practice, written by former Judge Robert Fuller and now edited by attorney Dwight Merriam, observes that municipal “POCDs” are “a planning concept. . . not based on existing conditions and zoning but rather a blueprint for recommended future development. . .,” and are based on “studies of physical, social, economic, and governmental conditions and trends.”

As a result, “in Connecticut, “the zoning commission. . . is not controlled by recommendations of the planning commission….” “Connecticut has always maintained the independence of the zoning commission, and periodic attempts by planners and others to give more power to the planning commission at the zoning commission’s expense have occurred.” It should be noted that while zoning regulation amendments are an ongoing responsibility, POCDs are only revised every ten years.

POCDs are not zoning plans. They are general and aspirational, not site-specific regulatory documents that can or should govern zoning regulation amendments, especially zone by zone, parcel by parcel plans for affordable units. (That is what the § 8-30j plans were for, before they were repealed.) Thus, the requirement that housing growth plans must be consistent with the municipality’s POCD creates a structure and process inconsistent with a basic premise of zoning in Connecticut.

Yet another problem: suppose wily opponents of affordable housing revise the municipal POCD by stripping out facilitation of affordable housing? Would the municipality then be free under the new Act from having to adopt any new or revised affordable housing zoning regulations? The point is that the requirement of plans being consistent with POCDs is a blueprint for exclusionary zoning.

Finally, as to regional plans, the notion that regional councils of government will be able to mediate disagreements among member towns about affordable housing goals seems unrealistic, yet the new Act requires this.

Which brings us to the requirement of consistency with the State Conservation and Development Policies Plan, 2025-2030, which includes the infamous Locational Guide Map. The “State C and D Plan” serves many useful purposes, providing an updated compilation of statewide development trends and a list of goals to which state agencies should aspire. But the Plan is not in any way a regulatory document or a land-use or site-specific zoning plan. Its Housing chapter is all of two pages, and contains only a list of general “targets” with which no one would disagree. Therefore, the new Act’s requirement that municipal and regional housing growth plans be consistent with the State Plan is misaligned because the State Plan does not specify land-use requirements with which a local or regional housing plan could conform.

Which leads us to ask whether the intent of this consistency requirement is to convert the Locational Guide Map into a type of statewide land-use control.

The State Plan and the Map formally apply when a state agency invests more than $200,000 in a “growth-related project,” but the Locational Guide Map is a color-coded depiction of the entire state that identifies “Activity Zones” (Major Urban, Regional, Local, Suburban and Rural) and steers state agency actions away from “Conversation Factors” such as wetlands, farmlands, aquifers, “critical habitats,” and similar characteristics.

Our concern is that OPM, or affordable housing opponents, will try to use the Locational Guide Map as a statewide zoning map by declaring that multi-family and affordable housing proposed outside an Activity Zone is not consistent with the State Plan.

Our state agencies have tried this before. In 2005, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and OPM assembled a plan in which the Locational Guide Map contained three shades of green – vast areas of land in dozens of municipalities – and the state DEEP decreed that it would not grant low-interest loans of federal Clean Water Act funds for any proposed sewer extension or expansion that would serve an area colored any shade of green on the Locational Guide Map.

Since, as noted above, sewers are usually essential for multi-family and affordable housing, DEEP essentially installed itself at a statewide multi-family housing supervisor. When this became apparent, housing advocates and the development community convinced the legislature that this was a misuse of the State Plan and Map and in 2013, the legislature revised both specifying these documents should govern prioritization of certain state funds, but not be a statewide, top-down land use plan. The new Act appears to reenact the earlier regime.

Yet another dysfunction is the requirement that housing growth plans be consistent with local sewer plans. Under state law, the sole job of water pollution control authorities (sewer commissions) is to manage capacity and engineering in the public sewer system. Our courts have held in several cases that sewer commissions may not use sewers to control or enforce land use and zoning; that is the exclusive purview of the zoning commission. For example, a town may not set parcel-by-parcel sewer gallonage limits as a way to prevent anything other than single-family homes on each parcel.

Like the other three consistency requirements in the new Act, sewer plan consistency is a roadmap for exclusionary land use.

A good example is the fact that the Town of East Lyme recently enacted a three-year moratorium, extendable, on all new sewer connections that will use more than 20,000 gallons per day. This effectively prohibits anything other than small residential development until at least 2028. So does East Lyme now have no obligation to facilitate multi-family housing, because its sewer commission has adopted a plan blocking such housing for the foreseeable future? Is this what the governor and the General Assembly had in mind when they framed the new Act around the phrase “Towns take the lead?”

Another important question: how will drafters of housing growth plans determine whether their plan is consistent with all four touchstones, and what will they do if the state and local POCDs and sewer plans conflict with each other, which is highly likely?

In summary, the sections of the new Act that require municipal and regional housing growth plans to be consistent with the town and regional POCD, the State Plan and local sewer plans contravene existing law and practice. They will be unlikely to facilitate affordable housing production.

Fair share

Interestingly, when what is now the Act was reintroduced in November, proponents of the “fair share” provisions of H.B. 5002 claimed that the new Act preserved key elements of the May-June 2025 proposal, while some others claimed that fair share had been removed.

The new Act contains echoes of fair share, but removes the mandates that towns enact zoning regulations that will facilitate the highly prescriptive affordable housing unit and household income targets stated in H.B. 5002.

The fingerprints of fair share are found in the Act’s Section 7, which requires regional councils to conduct a housing needs assessment and assign to each municipality an “affordable housing goal,” which goal becomes an organizing focus of the municipal and regional housing growth plans. The main difference from the May-June 2025 bill is that municipalities are required only to adopt “strategies” and “policies” and a schedule, but with no mandates or deadlines for revising zoning regulations.

Development opportunities

Two foundational questions are: will the General Assembly and the governor actually appropriate the incentive funds and underpin key sections of the new Act? And will municipalities, faced with complete new requirements but not mandates or penalties for non-compliance, actually cooperate?

Meanwhile, for the development community, the opportunities for 2026 and beyond appear to be:

• Take advantage of the new parking rules to increase residential density;
• Examine land zoned commercial or mixed-use for opportunities to develop middle housing;
• If a municipality proposes a transit-oriented district or priority housing development zone, pay attention to the potential for residential development as-of-right or by summary review;
• Continue to use § 8-30g where appropriate;
• Continue to work with proven financial and development programs administered by DOH and CHFA, including tax credit and low interest loan programs;
• Keep an eye out for CMDA development agreements and opportunities they create; and
• Pay attention to grants by OPM and DOH, as they may be an early sign of a development opening.

A Legislative agenda For 2026

Though legislators may be reluctant to revisit the new Act in the 2026 short session, these problems need attention:

1. Untangle and simplify the process and schedule for housing growth plans;
2. Repeal the dysfunctional and illegal “consistency” requirements for such plans;
3. Modify the nine-unit cap on middle housing developments to a number that will attract developers;
4. Explain how the CMDA program is intended to fit with the new housing programs;
5. Clarify the notably confusing phrases, undefined and hard-to-understand terms, and vague standards that permeate the Act;
6. Clarify roles of municipalities vs. zoning commissions;
7. Be sure the study committees looking at sewer policies and the § 8-30g Ten Percent List at least do not create new obstacles to affordable housing development; and
8. Consider (again) the “low-hanging fruit” we have advocated before, which is to require that all zoning regulations by a date certain comply with Public Act 21-29’s amendments to General Statutes § 8-2.

As readers can tell, overall, we are not fans of the new Act. While H.B. 5002 had its flaws that probably justified the governor’s veto, the new Act does not portend robust solutions to our affordable housing shortage.

The goal remains the approval, financing, and construction of thousands of lower-cost housing units, and that goal appears to be as compelling and unaddressed as it was a year ago.

Tim Hollister and Andrea Gomes are land use attorneys at the Hartford office of Hinckley Allen. They both work regularly on affordable housing development.

In 2022-23, Hollister co-chaired a statewide working group tasked by the legislature with reviewing all of the affordable housing plans (so-called “§ 8-30j plans”) prepared by nearly all municipalities and providing recommendations on how such plans could be improved. In September 2024, he published here a five-part series about affordable housing reform and in July 2025, a two-part series explaining House Bill 5002, the one vetoed by the governor in June 2025, and what could be done to fix it.

Gomes regularly represents clients before local and state agencies and in state court. She has assisted with obtaining municipal approvals and litigating affordable housing matters and property disputes such as quiet title actions, easement disputes, nuisance actions, and adverse possession cases.

Attorney Raphael Podolsky also contributed to this series.

Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice, but a summary of public information. The Act contains many important details not summarized here.