As the legislative session moves into high gear, Connecticut’s housing crisis continues to be top of mind.
Lawmakers are considering a variety of bills aimed at increasing supply, which is a prerequisite for bringing prices down. Many of these proposals have been modified from previous years based on feedback from supporters and skeptics.
Unfortunately, the rhetoric from opponents has stayed the same. People who favor doing nothing have been so successful in recent years that they may think running out the same tired arguments is enough to find success yet again. Lawmakers need to ensure that isn’t the case.
My organization, Open Communities Alliance, has proposed a plan aimed at increasing affordable housing supply across the state. We call it Towns Take the Lead, because that’s how it works. Meeting the requirements of the law rests entirely on planning and zoning, not the number of units produced.
Under our proposal, towns would decide for themselves where their share of the housing needed by their region could be built. They would decide what it could look like. The state would provide structure and guidelines, but all the decisions would be up to the local municipality. Towns could even substitute a different figure for the state-generated number if there is a reason the state calculation is not feasible.
The number of units needed derives from a study undertaken by the state of Connecticut following the passage of a 2023 law. Considering current housing underproduction with a focus on the housing needs for households that are severely cost-burdened, the study found the state lacks some 136,000 units of housing. The allocations by town, which by statute were supposed to have been ready by the end of 2024, will instead be released in April, but will likely align with the numbers OCA put out in 2021 and which are available here.
The Towns Take the Lead approach is carefully calibrated to individual communities, both in terms of what is needed in the region and what a town is capable of supporting. No town is asked to take on a disproportionate share of new housing, and, crucially, no town is expected to build the housing themselves. Rather, they are asked to plan and zone so the housing is allowed to be built.
Despite this, the familiar cast of opponents has taken to calling this proposal “one size fits all.” The problem, they say, is that no state solution can take into account widely differing communities, each of which have individual needs.
But this criticism is misguided. The unit targets are specifically tailored to circumstances on the ground in each town, and if any true barriers are not considered, towns can explain the issue and propose alternative targets. The individual decisions would continue to be made on the local level.
That’s why anyone describing this proposal as a “state takeover” of local zoning, or a loss of local control, is being less than forthcoming. The state is not taking over anyone’s zoning, or grabbing control of local decision making.
Some claims in opposition to zoning reform are flat wrong. The founder of CT 169 Strong, the consistently mendacious anti-reform group centered in Fairfield County, said in testimony before the legislature’s Housing Committee that Towns Take the Lead could require some communities to double their housing stock. This is, in every sense, wrong.
The idea seems to be that since some affordable housing is built as part of larger, mostly market-rate developments, that all housing under this plan would be built that way. That would mean meeting the state targets for affordable units would necessitate many times more market-rate units. But that isn’t the case at all.
There are many ways to build affordably priced units other than in the context of a larger, market-rate development. Anyone who says zoning reform would require doubling local housing stock is misreading the proposal.
Many representatives of small towns have claimed they lack the ability to plan and zone for new housing. Fortunately, Towns Take the Lead includes funding for technical assistance for municipalities and councils of government to facilitate sound planning and redesigned zoning. And in any event, as studies have shown, most remote towns would have relatively small numbers of units for which to plan, so that component is not terribly complex.
The same critics also complain that there is no demand for more housing in their community. There is, in fact, serious demand throughout Connecticut, which was recently identified as the most housing-constrained state in the nation. More to the point, the entirety of the Towns Take the Lead proposal focuses on planning and zoning, not building. If private developers decide there is no market in those communities, then nothing would get built and there will be no fallout for municipalities.
Another entry on the list of concerns focuses on water and sewers. It’s true there are limitations on what can be built based on available infrastructure. It’s just as true that those limits are sometimes exaggerated by people who want to keep out development using any reason at hand. There are also lots of creative solutions to water and sewer limitations, including light density within public health code limitations, and community septic systems paid for by the developer.
The truth is development would be limited if the infrastructure isn’t in place to support it. Still, we can do much more in Connecticut to build modest density even where there isn’t a sewer connection. Zoning, not capacity, is often the obstacle, and zoning can be changed.
Towns Take the Lead has evolved over the past several years in response to questions and concerns on the part of advocates, allies and skeptics. It’s a plan that meets the moment by taking on the state’s crippling housing crisis, even as it leaves local decision-makers with the ultimate authority over how it gets done.
Opponents haven’t adapted at all. They’re still offering the same complaints, unaware the proposal they’re complaining about is not the one on offer. Lawmakers should reject their naysaying and pass Towns Take the Lead.
Erin Boggs is Executive Director of Open Communities Alliance, a nonprofit organization focused on housing policy.