This is the third of a five-part series exploring issues surrounding Connecticut’s affordable housing needs. Parts One and Two are here.
We have so far examined how the structure of government in Connecticut challenges affordable housing reform, and myths and misconceptions that throw policy discussions off track. In this article, the focus is considerations that compete with residential development.
Foremost is environmental protection, in particular drinking water, water quality, and wetlands/watercourses. There is no reason that an affordable housing plan should compromise protection of water resources. In fact, the good news is that our state environmental laws and programs have done a good job of facilitating housing development while protecting environmental quality.
No affordable housing law or program overrides protection of the environment. Wetlands commissions are not subject to § 8-30g, and every affordable development must meet the same standards as market-rate development. Zoning commission denials of § 8-30g proposals based on concerns about water supply or quality have generally been upheld in court as the type of substantial public interest that overrides housing need.
Similarly, while state law does not allow towns to require affordable developments to preserve a specific percentage of property as open space (because this power can be used as an exclusionary tool), it is common for affordable development plans to voluntarily include open space, whether for active or passive recreation, because it is a desired amenity.
Environmental protection, however, has a flip side when it comes to affordable housing, which is local agencies, sometimes abetted by opposed neighbors, inventing or exaggerating concerns to stave off affordable development. At times, opponents who previously have been unconcerned about wetlands protection have taken up the cause when lower-income development is proposed. Speculative concerns about wildlife are often presented in tandem. The latent hypocrisy is that neighbors and opponents sometimes live in older homes that were built decades ago on filled wetlands.
Some wetlands commissions recognize this opposition for what it is. Still, commissioners often feel the wrath of their fellow residents and impose stricter if not illegal environmental and wetlands standards on affordable development. An example, well known in the development community, is the wetlands commission that fought an affordable development by asserting jurisdiction over not only the pond where salamanders would lay their eggs in the spring, but also non-wetlands areas hundreds of feet from the pond where they might crawl. Our Supreme Court and then the legislature invalidated this overreach.
An often overlooked irony of this topic is that multi-family housing can be more environmentally friendly than single-family housing. Clustered units allow more open space. An apartment building can better manage stormwater, save on transportation costs, and result in a lower carbon footprint. Developments with sewers are superior to those with community septic systems. And in general, higher density buildings allow for spreading out the costs of environmental management.
Collectively, then, we need to ensure that affordable development does not occur at the expense of natural and environmental resources, while also keeping a close watch on whether concerns about pollution are real or conjured to reinforce exclusionary zoning.
Another top-of-mind consideration must be how climate change may impact development design, a field now called resiliency planning. The fact that affordable units are proposed does not allow building in flood-prone areas. Conversely, regulators should not credit the argument now being made that higher density development should be banned because rainfall events have become less predictable. In fact, multi-family developments often provide better stormwater management than subdivisions of single-family homes.
Sustainability, green building, and energy efficiency go hand in hand with all forms of development, and are important to affordable housing plans. Providing electric vehicle charging stations and limiting fossil fuel use should also be part of conversations about lower-cost housing.
Density (housing units per acre of land) is another consideration that sometimes morphs into an environmental concern. Too often, housing opponents criticize any density that is higher than the existing neighborhood. The environmental sensitivity of density, however, depends on topography, layout, building design, and screening; two units per acre can look overly dense, while 25 units on the same parcel can be just fine, if skillfully planned. For example, what is called “light touch density” is an increasingly used and successful technique.
Sewage disposal is another essential factor. Supporting affordable housing should not compromise the proper management of a town’s sewer system. On the other hand, local sewer commissions should never be allowed to hide sewer capacity or fabricate system maintenance concerns to stall affordable developments, as several towns have done in recent years. The state should impose uniform, reduced separation distances for septic systems and less onerous rules for septic field reserve areas. Smaller developments should be allowed to rely on so-called alternative treatment facilities, whose technology has vastly improved in recent years.
And then there are financial considerations. Though not widely understood, local zoning commissions, whether considering affordable or any other types of development, are prohibited by law from making land use permit decisions based on fiscal impact on town services (including education), or property tax collections.
Meanwhile, it is theoretically possible for our state and local governments to spend our way out of the current housing affordability crisis, by simply(!) committing hundreds of millions of dollars to construction subsidies, low interest loans, planning grants, tax credits, tax abatements, rental assistance vouchers, down payment assistance, enterprises zones, utility allowances, public-private partnerships, and many other techniques. The federal government’s most suitable role in housing is providing financial assistance and incentives.
Allocations of financial resources, of course, come at the expense of other competing needs. How and how much our various governments should appropriate to make housing less expensive is beyond the scope of this article and my experience. My point is that while the total financial need to support affordable housing is beyond what government may be able to provide, money spent strategically on the most effective programs can create tens of thousands of new and rebuilt units.
If I were king, I would allocate money to (1) help and oversee towns in doing the critical work (described in the next two articles in this series) of specific land use regulation revisions and choice of development locations; (2) provide rent subsidies and down payment assistance; (3) make available more lower interest rate construction loans; and (4) rehabilitate existing units.
As with other factors listed above, our goal should be to spend wisely, but not let local regulation and permitting stand in the way of financial resources that government is willing and able to commit.
We should not forget environmental justice. It is well documented that from the 1920s to the 1960s, when zoning was a tool of segregation, public infrastructure such as sewer, water, parks, and public transportation was manipulated to exclude minorities. A legal, economic, and moral imperative for affordable housing reform is to acknowledge and dismantle this legacy of zoning and planning that concentrated and underserved minority groups by forcing affordable housing into unsuitable locations.
Finally, a word about historic preservation. Many towns have established districts to preserve structures and places, allowing us to appreciate our past by seeing how our community once looked. But here again, historic preservation can be a tool of exclusion, with opponents of affordable housing arguing that lower cost housing will detract from the “character” of historic buildings, even if the affordable plan will have no physical impact on the historic resource.
In a recent decision, our state Supreme Court held that protecting “viewsheds” (what can be seen) from historic properties is an invalid extension of historic resource protection and could not be used to stop a housing proposal. Like the other protected resources discussed above, we need to ensure that our past is preserved, but not artificially deployed or extended to block compelling needs of our present, such as affordable housing.
Tomorrow: Low-hanging legislative fruit for CT affordable housing.