In the midst of a worsening housing crisis, Connecticut lawmakers will look to pass legislation around zoning, homelessness and eviction reform during the 2025 legislative session, which kicked off Wednesday. It’s a reprise of agendas they’ve considered in past sessions — with a couple of new ideas.
As in past years, housing advocates face a complicated political reality in which Democratic support for significant measures to increase the housing supply is divided, while Republicans staunchly oppose many proposals.
But the membership of both parties broadly say they’re looking for ways to make Connecticut more affordable. House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, who has championed housing legislation, said he thinks housing — a primary driver of the cost of living — is the obvious answer.
“There are things we can control better than other issues, and one of them is housing,” Rojas said. “If we’re really serious about addressing the affordability needs of people in Connecticut, there are some things that are cheaper to do and more feasible to do around housing.”
Connecticut lacks about 98,000 units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest-income renters. Homelessness has increased over the past few years, and thousands of people are paying more than a third of their income to housing costs.
Gov. Ned Lamont agreed that there’s an urgency to housing legislation. In his annual State of the State address Wednesday, the governor issued a directive to the General Assembly’s two committees tasked with considering solutions to the crisis: Housing and Planning and Development.
Speed up the permitting process,” Lamont said. “Get those shovels in the ground.”
Rojas said he’s “intrigued” to hear more ideas from the governor on ways to speed up the process of building housing. Asked whether he thinks there will be movement on housing bills this session, Rojas responded: “We’ll make movement.”
Experts have attributed the rising cost and declining supply of housing to restrictive local zoning laws that make it difficult to build the volume of multifamily housing needed to meet demand. Advocates seeking to address the problem plan to propose statewide zoning reform measures.
But previous efforts to pass zoning reforms have faced fierce opposition from some local leaders who say state regulation dilutes local control and imposes a one-size-fits-all solution on towns.
Some of those opponents and lawmakers say they’ll seek changes to 8-30g, a decades-old state housing law that offers developers court remedies when towns deny proposals for affordable housing construction. Towns are exempt from the law if at least 10% of their housing stock is deemed affordable.
Lawmakers this session are also likely to consider changes to the state’s eviction laws and explore efforts to reduce homelessness.
Connecticut’s part-time legislature has until early June to finalize legislation and hammer out a budget for the coming two fiscal years. Because it’s a biennial process, legislative sessions run slightly longer in years like 2025, when a new budget will be passed, and shorter in off years, when lawmakers only make adjustments to the two-year plan. During long sessions, like this year’s, there’s more time to consider larger, more ambitious legislation.
In 2024, the Housing and Planning and Development committees collectively passed 12 bills into law, according to voting data gathered and analyzed by The Connecticut Mirror.
Lawmakers who represent small towns and suburbs, particularly those in Fairfield County, often oppose significant zoning changes and housing legislation.
House Bill 5474, which was a wide-ranging measure that aimed to increase housing development and grant more rights to tenants, was the most controversial housing bill for lawmakers in the region. Ten voted against the legislation, but it passed into law. Other bills garnered a handful of abstentions — another form of opposition.
Zoning
Lawmakers are revisiting several zoning reforms they’ve considered in previous years, including transit-oriented development efforts, changes to 8-30g and a concept known as “fair share,” which estimates regional housing needs and assigns the responsibility for development equally among towns.
On transit-oriented development, advocates will push for a new version of a bill known as “Work, Live, Ride,” which calls on towns to build more housing near bus hubs and train stations. Pete Harrison, Connecticut director of the nonprofit Regional Plan Association, said this year’s legislation should closely resemble legislation the group advocated for last session. That bill advanced through the House but wasn’t called for a vote in the Senate.
Harrison said he’s hopeful this year because “we had really good support,” for the bill last time around, even though it was a short session and an election year.
Leaders on the Planning and Development Committee said they support the measure. Planning and Development co-chair Sen. MD Rahman, D-Manchester, said he sees housing shortages “across the board,” from transit-oriented development to affordable units and housing that supports the needs of local employers and workers.
Planning and Development co-chair Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, said she wants to look at ways to make the planning and zoning process for affordable housing proposals more efficient. “How can we cut red tape and simplify the processes?” she said.
Proposed changes to the 8-30g law could come before the Planning and Development committee, led by ranking member Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich. Fazio wants to expand the types of units that qualify as “affordable” to make it easier for towns to reach the 10% threshold that exempts them from the law. He also said wants to make it easier to create what’s called “middle housing,” such as duplexes or four-unit homes.
Fazio and other Republicans have supported similar measures in the past, but they’ve been met with criticism from some advocates who say it would make 8-30g less effective. Other groups like 169 Strong, which opposes many statewide zoning reform proposals and advocates for local control, support the reforms Fazio has put forth.
“If we reform 8-30g by making more types of housing — middle housing, workforce housing, affordable housing — count, and we say no to the heavy handed, one-size-fits-all approach of ‘fair share,’ while at the same time creating reforms that make it easier to build more middle housing … we can create a situation where towns and cities buy into new housing and we actually do move the ball,” Fazio said.
We can create a situation where towns and cities buy into new housing and we actually do move the ball.
Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich
Maria Weingarten, one of the organizers of 169 Strong, said she supports making changes to 8-30g and wants to see towns keep control of their zoning. “I think any sort of opportunities where towns can decide for themselves how to create affordability and how to meet some of these goals is a better opportunity,” Weingarten said.
Planning and Development will likely see a proposal for a program that bears similarities to fair share. The approach, which has been employed in New Jersey, entails estimating the housing need regionally, then dividing that need up among municipalities and assigning each town to plan and zone for a set number of units.
The nonprofit Open Communities Alliance, one of a consortium of housing organizations known as Growing Together Connecticut, has advocated for fair share in the past. But this year, the group has a new idea they’re calling “Towns Take the Lead.” The concept calls for the state to provide guidance to each town on the number of units they should plan for, and for towns to include that as a goal in their affordable housing plans, which they’re required to produce every five years.
It differs from fair share in that it makes clear where and how towns should plan for these units. It leaves it up to towns to decide where they want to build units.
Erin Boggs, executive director of the Open Communities Alliance, said the programs’ success would be based on, “whether the towns have completed their updated plans, whether those plans create a reasonable expectation that the housing allocation the town is assigned is going to be created, and then actually making the changes put forth in the plan.”
Evictions
On eviction reform, legislators expect to hear several of the same proposals that came up last session, including a proposed ban on no-cause evictions and additional funding requests for rent assistance and a program known as “right to counsel.”
The Connecticut Tenants Union is leading the charge for a proposal, which drew attention last session, to require landlords to provide a reason when they evict someone. It would largely ban no-cause evictions, which typically occur at the end of a lease.
“This is not something that’s really out there in left field,” said David Rich, chief executive officer at The Housing Collective, a nonprofit advocacy group. “It’s something that has worked in Connecticut, it’s worked in numerous other states.”
This is not something that’s really out there in left field.
David Rich, The Housing Collective
These protections already exist for certain groups including senior citizens and people with disabilities. Tenants’ rights advocates want to see that expanded to include most renters, although the legislation would likely have some exceptions.
“We felt like we were able to make a lot of progress last session and in some ways just kind of ran out of time,” said Luke Melonakos-Harrison, vice president of the statewide tenant union group. He noted that the Housing Committee passed the bill last year, and he thinks that could give this year’s proposal the momentum it needs.
Last session, during public hearings, tenants testified that they were being booted out of their homes with little notice and without having done anything wrong — often, they said, by large landlords who had bought the properties and wanted to increase the rent.
Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport, said eviction reform will be a “huge” focus for him this session.
But he’ll likely face opposition to the proposal. Republican lawmakers and landlords last session argued against the eviction reform, saying it infringed on the rights of business owners.
“A renters agreement is a contract between the housing provider and the renter,” said Housing Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe. “When the lease ends, the agreement is over. If the renter feels they have been retaliated against, there are many options they have to fight it, but giving renters the option to stay in the unit in perpetuity makes no sense.”
Advocates are also asking the legislature for more funding — to prevent evictions by boosting rent aid, and to help those who are going through the process by providing legal aid.
As rents rise, it’s gotten more expense for the state to offer housing vouchers through its Rental Assistance Program. Existing funding for the program isn’t meeting the need, and thousands of people have languished on the waiting list for years. Advocates fear the program could run out of money soon if more isn’t added this session.
“It’s our responsibility to point out that this program is in deficit and it is not reflecting the years of increased rents we’ve seen,” said Sean Ghio, policy director at the Partnership for Strong Communities.
The state’s “right to counsel” program, which offers free legal assistance to low-income tenants facing eviction, is also asking for more money. The program was initially funded with COVID relief dollars, which are running out.
Angela Schlingheyde, executive director at the Connecticut Bar Foundation, which oversees the program, said access to an attorney during the eviction process has increased by three times since the program started. “When people don’t have access to counsel, they end up being evicted,” Schlingheyde said. “They end up going into homelessness.”
Homelessness
Lawmakers this session will also be fielding requests for more money for homeless service providers. Nonprofit shelters and other organizations have asked for years for increased funding, particularly to raise workers’ pay and ensure there’s annual funding for extra shelter beds during the winter months.
Many shelter workers have reported their own struggles with homelessness and housing insecurity on account of their low wages.
This year, services providers are expected to request an additional $33.5 million in the state budget.
Sarah Fox, chief executive of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, said as the ranks of unhoused residents in Connecticut have grown, agencies and their staff require more resources. The system has received incremental, one-time funding, but much of it came through COVID relief dollars — which isn’t sustainable.
“We’re trying to be solutions focused,” Fox said. “But this type of spurious funding has an incredible impact on our system’s ability to function and to provide critical, lif- saving services.”
Felipe, the Housing Committee co-chair, said he’s interested in legislation to protect people experiencing homelessness from being ticketed while they’re sleeping in public spaces. A Supreme Court decision over the summer allowed cities to ban sleeping and camping in public parks, and Felipe said since then he’s been hearing about cases where unhoused people are getting fined.
“I am looking to decriminalize homelessness,” Felipe said. “Fines can lead to arrest, and I really don’t want people to go to jail because they have nowhere to go.”
Katy Golvala contributed to this report