Another group on Wednesday added its voice to the cohort clamoring for lawmakers to take action to push towns to make it easier to build more apartments: landlords.
At a press conference in Newington, the Connecticut Apartment Association asked lawmakers to take steps to increase the number of multi-family units in the state, especially near public transit, make the permitting process easier for builders and enact measures to help developers more easily turn commercial properties into apartments.
This is the start of a more public push than in years’ past by landlords to put their political weight behind housing development. Landlord groups have typically gotten support from Republican lawmakers and pro-business legislators.
“We are here to engage the discussion now because there’s no easy fix and the old approaches must change. This is what we’ve been talking about with legislative leaders and will continue to do so leading up to the January legislative session,” said apartment association member and New Haven landlord Dondré Roberts. “Our message is simple and direct: Connecticut needs to make it easier to develop and build multi-family housing affordably now.”
Connecticut’s housing crisis has been a problem for legislators for years. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Connecticut has a shortage of over 98,000 housing units that are affordable and available for low-income renters.
State legislators have been pushing for housing reforms for the past couple of legislative sessions. Roberts said his group supports legislation like House Bill 5474, which passed last session and includes measures to provide incentives for middle housing development, require written notice of rent increases and develop ordinances for short-term rental properties, among other actions.
“Last year, H.B. 5474, which tackles the missing middle of duplexes, triplexes and housing that’s between single-family and multi-family communities like this one, is a great start and they need to keep going,” Roberts said.
Although members said they supported the bill, they did not testify publicly on it. The bill changed substantially between the public hearing and final votes, and members said Wednesday they’re working toward more support this session.
“It’s time,” Roberts said, of the need for more action. “Just as someone who lives in the state … it’s tough out there, especially when you are looking for housing that sometimes doesn’t exist for your budget.”
The landlords’ support may create tension within the coalition of people supporting zoning and land use changes. Typically, those in favor of zoning reform have aligned themselves with tenants’ rights groups.
But the apartment association has opposed bills pro-housing coalition members have supported and on Wednesday it called for lawmakers to stop focusing on landlord-tenant issues and get to what they called the root of the problem — the lack of housing.
“The legislature needs to turn away from the landlord-tenant battles like rent caps and forever leases that held us back last year,” Roberts said. “Those proposals were rejected. They took everyone’s eye off the ball, stalled progress, and they don’t add a single unit of housing.”
Lawmakers in past sessions have considered proposals to cap rent increases and to stop no-fault evictions, or evictions that occur when leases end. Neither proposal has gotten through the House or Senate.
Broadly, the apartment association members said they wanted to make it easier to build more housing of many types, including higher-density developments. They said lawmakers should explore methods such as tax incentives, among other solutions.
They pointed to data that shows the vast majority of Connecticut’s residential land is zoned for single-family housing and said that needs to change.
Landlords said they also wanted to see ways to make it easier to convert vacant commercial properties into apartments. The strategy has been used across the country in cities like Providence, where a shopping mall was transformed into apartments.
A major concern for the apartment association and other groups is the development process for housing around Connecticut. Kevin Santini, a principal at the family-owned property management and construction company Santini Homes, said developers struggle in Connecticut because of the extensive permitting process.
“If you go into a piece of land that isn’t zoned for multi-family, it’s very daunting and very unattractive to go in and try to go through the processes that you need to go through,” Santini said.
He emphasizes the need for predictability with infrastructure.
“You can’t make the process take two to three years, especially if you’re rezoning a parcel by that time,” Santini said. “It’s years and it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars if not seven figures.”
Roberts said the group supports incentive-based solutions rather than mandates for towns. That issue is one of the biggest debates in the conversation about zoning reform and housing development in Connecticut.
Top lawmakers and housing experts have said leaving control in the hands of local government isn’t working. But Gov. Ned Lamont and many opponents of statewide zoning reform have argued for incentive-based, locally driven solutions.
Santini said the responsibility for building the housing will lie with developers.
“To make positive changes, politics can’t be involved,” Santini said. “And I know that’s crazy to say, and maybe even naive, but we have to do what’s best for the state of Connecticut, and we have to put our agendas aside. And right now, the state needs us. The state needs builders.”