A forum on affordable housing with a couple of state House Democratic leaders turned into a discussion Monday about the complicated political realities surrounding major housing reforms.
Experts have tied much of the state’s lack of affordable housing to restrictive local zoning that makes it hard to build multi-family developments on most of Connecticut’s residential land.
Housing advocates have argued that towns have had ample time to remedy this problem, and that the state needs to step in with widespread zoning reform. Meanwhile, opponents to reform say such a measure would dilute local control. The state’s Democrats are split on the issue, while most Republicans argue for local control over zoning.
House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, and Planning and Development Committee co-chair Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, spoke Monday about the issue in Hartford at a Partnership for Strong Communities forum.
The lawmakers said it’s likely state-level progress will be slow, pointed to some of the flaws of incentive-based approaches and said that an economic argument for housing reform may be more effective than a moral one in Connecticut’s political environment.
“It comes down to the biggest challenge we face is just the inertia that we exist in,” Rojas said.
Housing has long been a volatile political issue in Connecticut and has sparked some of the longest debates and closest votes of the past couple of legislative sessions. The issue has grown particularly acute over the past couple of years as housing costs have risen and more families face losing their homes.
Connecticut lacks tens of thousands of units of housing that are affordable and available to its lowest income renters, and thousands of families spend more than a third of their income on housing costs.
The country is facing a housing crisis that has been a focal point of the presidential campaigns. During the 2008 recession, housing construction dropped dramatically, and the country hasn’t recovered.
The number of construction starts over the past several years has fallen short of what the United States needs to accommodate for population growth.
Connecticut has made what Rojas calls “painfully incremental” progress on addressing the lack of housing during recent legislative sessions. He said that over the past couple of years, other states have advanced more policy than Connecticut.
“I recognize that’s the political reality that we have to deal with,” Rojas said. “I’m not happy about it. I’m not content with it. But as the majority leader, as somebody who counts the votes on the bills, I can tell you that is the route we have to take, given the politics of housing here in Connecticut.”
Kavros DeGraw said that for years, the state didn’t do enough to address a burgeoning crisis, allowing the problem to build.
“We have let this go on for so long that we’re now in that tidal wave,” Kavros DeGraw said. She added that the problem is multi-layered and includes a lack of political will and issues with zoning and building permitting, among others.
“It’s all come together into this perfect storm where we find ourselves and the incremental change is really hard for people who are advocates, everyone in this room, because you see how bad it is,” she told housing advocates Monday.
That political reality is one in which the Democratic caucus is split on what to do. While some lawmakers like Rojas and Kavros DeGraw have argued for larger policy changes, many suburban Democrats, particularly those in Fairfield County, are reluctant to support major reform.
Rojas said as Democrats have picked up more seats in what were traditionally districts represented by Republicans, passing housing-related legislation gets more complicated.
“There are a lot of my colleagues who are very, very public about local control and how sacrosanct it is and how important it is, and we can’t do anything to change it,” he said. “So that complicates the politics of how we handle it within the building or within the chamber.”
Kavros DeGraw, whose district was represented by Republicans for several years until she was elected in 2020, said she thinks there’s more support for housing progress among constituents than lawmakers realize. She added that legislators have to pick the issues they’re willing to fight for.
“I think that part of this is an education for people, and part of it is you’ve got to decide the hill you’re willing to die on as an elected official,” Kavros DeGraw said. “And for me, the hill I’m willing to die on is making sure that there’s a roof over people’s heads.”
Much of the discussion at the state level has centered around whether to use incentive-based approaches or mandates to spur the creation of affordable housing. Rojas said the incentive-based approaches slow progress.
Many experts have said that if the state offers incentives to build affordable housing, there will still be towns that don’t participate.
“The incentive route is like a 10, 15, 20 [year] or never type of solution to a lot of these issues,” Rojas said. “So it becomes a question, do we have the political will to actually do something more aggressive?”
At the end of the discussion, which ranged from the political difficulty of passing a “fair share” approach, which would assign towns a set number of units to plan for based on regional need, to rent caps and transit-oriented development, an audience question about the morality of the issue drew applause from attendees.
“The character of many of the towns in the state of Connecticut that we’re asked to respect was based off the housing segregation of my grandparents and my parents,” said Ivelisse Correa, vice president of Black Lives Matter 860. “Why should I have to respect the character of a town that was built to keep me out?”
Historically, zoning has been used to make it difficult for people with low incomes, particularly people of color, to live in certain towns or neighborhoods.
Rojas said that while housing is one of the civil rights issues of our time, using a moral approach to incite change isn’t working politically in Connecticut.
“We can continue, and we should continue to challenge people morally on that question, but I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t know that we can speak on moral grounds on this issue, unfortunately,” Rojas said. “I think we have to shift the conversation to one of economics, because I think that’s what really can get people to change and think differently about this.”
Gov. Ned Lamont has argued in favor of more affordable housing, particularly increased density near train and bus stations, largely speaking about it as a boon to Connecticut’s economy.
References to a town’s character — meaning an area’s general aesthetic, architecture and feel — are often used in arguments against more housing developments. The legislature in 2021 passed a law saying the term can’t be used as a legal basis for zoning regulations.
“Should we pick character over safety? Should we pick character over making sure that people are housed and fed?” Kavros DeGraw said. “I don’t think so. But again, that gets us back to the moral will.”
Originally Published: October 22, 2024 at 2:07 p.m.