nothin Urban Housing Lauded; Suburbs Challenged | New Haven Independent

Urban Housing Lauded; Suburbs Challenged

Thomas Breen photos

Officials, developers break ground on Wooster Square’s “The Whit.”

Affordable housing advocates call for inclusive zoning in Woodbridge.

Developers raised shovels full of dirt in Wooster Square Tuesday to celebrate New Haven’s continued market-rate apartment boom — while affordable housing advocates headed to Woodbridge to take on decades-old laws that enable suburban segregation.

Those two housing-related press conferences took place within two hours and seven miles of one another.

Together, they shone a light on what kind of housing does and doesn’t get built where in 2020 Connecticut. On where multi-family housing is being built in the region. On why those rentals are being built where they are. And on how civil rights attorneys seek to leverage the current nationwide reckoning with systemic racial injustice to undo specific laws they say exacerbate housing segregation.

Construction continues at “The Whit” on Chapel Street.

At the New Haven groundbreaking on Chapel Street near Wooster Square, city officials and local business boosters welcomed with open arms a global real estate firm looking to build 230 new market-rate apartments atop the site of a former surface parking lot and the now-bulldozed former Comcast building.

This is a strong sector in a strong submarket, and it’s getting stronger,” Hines Senior Managing Director Tommy Craig said about building apartments in New Haven. We felt great about New Haven going into the pandemic. We feel even greater after the pandemic.”

The site of a planned new four-family home in Woodbridge.

At the Woodbridge event in front of the suburb’s pedimented and pilastered town hall, two dozen regional and statewide affordable housing advocates, civil rights lawyers, and law students described their newly launched plan to amend the town’s zoning code to allow for the construction of multi-family housing as of right.

Their test case in this zoning overhaul endeavor: To push through an amendment that would allow them to convert a vacant, single-family home into a four-family residence — and pave the way for similar such multi-family housing constructions and conversions to take place all across town.

We are here today to hold Woobridge accountable for decades of exlclusionary zoning and demand it take concrete steps to reform its planning and zoning policies to come into compliance with state and federal law,” said Open Communities Alliance Executive Director Erin Boggs.

Today, Woodbridge’s zoning is some of the most exclusionary and segregated in the state.”

Dirt Shoveled For The Whit”

The site of the planned new “The Whit” apartments.

The first presser of the morning took place at 631 Chapel St. near the intersection with Olive Street. That’s where the former Comcast building stood for years derelict and empty in between downtown and Wooster Square.

Tuesday morning, that stretch was occupied instead by an expansive tract of dirt, scattered piles of rubble, a few construction vehicles, and two dozen jubliant and hard-hat-wearing developers and city officials looking to shovel some ceremonial dirt.

Hines, a Houston-based development firm, plans to build 230 new market-rate apartments and ground-floor retail spaces across two new buildings. One is slated for the former Comcast site, one across the street in a parking lot adjacent to the Strouse Adler apartment building.

Hines took over the project from the Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners for nearly $15 million last year after Spinnaker and the city successfully fought off years of lawsuits from the owner of the Strouse Adler building seeking to stymie the new development.

The new apartment complex will be called The Whit.”

Craig and fellow Hines development manager Grant Jaber (pictured right to left) said Tuesday’s groundbreaking represented the firm’s first New Haven building project, as well as its first residential building in the state of Connecticut, where they had previously worked only on office buildings.

In the last 10 years, our work has really been all New York, all the time,” Craig said. It seems like this is a particularly propitious time given the shift in demand out of New York City and in the direction of the larger metropolitan region.”

Craig expounded upon that point after the formal presser. While the Covid-19 pandemic and associated economic downturn initially resulted in the drying up of financing for large-scale construction projects back in March and April, he said, the federal government’s bid this spring to stimulate the economy has freed up money to keep flowing to what was already a hot apartment construction market.

It was very interesting to perceive that first investors and then lenders understood that the pandemic would fundamentally begin to redistribute the footprint in the metropolitan New York area,” he said.

That is, people are and will continue to move out of denser cities like New York and into nearby areas like Connecticut, Craig said. He said New Haven is a particularly attractive place for apartment developers to invest in because the city’s two anchor employers, Yale University and Yale New Haven Hospital, aren’t going anywhere, even during a pandemic.

I think we’re going to be a beneficiary of a much greater opportunity here than we even initially perceived,” he said. While retail and office projects remain iffy investment opportunities, he continued, There’s probably no sector stronger right now, at least in this part of the world, than the living sector.”

City Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli (pictured) agreed. He fleshed out the developer’s confidence with some real-world data from New Haven’s current construction scene.

We are now up to 735 housing permits in the City of New Haven this year alone,” he said. That’s not only putting construction workers back to work, but you also see the value for people, the resiliency of small businesses, and the great places of New Haven that are built on a number of things coming together.”

New apartments rising at 87 Union St.

The Whit is being built right next to a planned new 299-unit apartment complex, already in the works, at 87 Union St.

Projects like these create density and value of place that will support many of our small businesses,” he said.

Piscitelli added that new housing construction is not a problem for just New Haven to solve. This is a regional and statewide issue, requiring regional and statewide collabroations.

The pervasive shortage of housing in the State of Connecticut has a lot to do with driving change and growth through focus and technical determination,” he said. A successful regional housing strategy, he concluded, will make sure that a level of growth happens around the region in the right places, and supports our economic rebound.”

Woodbridge: A History Of Exclusion

Outside Woodbridge’s Memorial Town Hall.

Two hours later, a group of affordable housing advocates held a very different type of press conference outside of Woodbridge’s Memorial Town Hall at 11 Meetinghouse Lane.

The event was organized by the statewide civil rights group Open Communities Alliance (OCA) and by the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, and in particular the school’s Community & Economic Development Clinic.

The two groups held the presser Tuesday to announce their new “#OpenWoodbridge” campaign. It is oriented around a newly submitted application to the Woodbridge Planning and Zoning Commission that requests an amendment to the town’s zoning code. 

The proposed amendment — which can be read in full here and in summary here and here — would open up the town’s residential districts to the as-of-right development of multi-family housing with affordable units.

2 Orchard Rd. in Woodbridge.

The first housing project that the advocates plan to build out if the amendment is passed would be at 2 Orchard Rd., a currently vacant single-family home atop a 1.5‑acre parcel of land in Woodbridge that was recently purchased by Stamford developer Richard Freedman of the Garden Homes Fund.

Open Communities Alliance plans to convert that building into a four-unit multi-family home in which two of the prospective units — a two-bedroom unit and a three-bedroom unit — would be leased to families receiving rental assistance through Section 8 or the state’s Rental Assistance Program. The remaining two new units would be rented at market rates.

After taking this first step, the Town must develop and adopt a plan for residential zoning and planning that will fully correct and remedy the Town’s history of exclusionary land use policies and practices,” reads the opening letter in the zoning amendment application, by enacting zoning regulations and adopting other measures needed to prioritize, promote, and facilitate the development of affordable housing sufficient to meet the Town’s fair share’ of the region’s need for such housing.”

According to OCA, of the town’s roughly 3,000 housing units, only 43 are currently considered affordable by the state. Thirty of those affordable units are reserved for seniors, and those same 30 units are set to cease being affordable this year.

The advocates present at Tuesday’s presser elaborated on the specifics of the zoning application — and on the broader, historical reasons for their filing it in Woodbridge.

Boggs (pictured) said that there is no district in town that currently permits the development of multi-family housing consisting of three units or more. Only 0.2 percent of the 19 square-mile town allows for the construction of duplexes, she said. While the remainder of the town permits only single-family houses — often on no less than 1.5 acres a piece.

These exclusionary zoning” codes date back to the 1930s in Woodbridge, she said. For generations, lower and middle-income families wanting to move to the town to participate in its public school system or get out of the city center have been thwarted in part by this zoning code.

Families that have borne the brunt of this exclusion are disproportionately Black and Hispanic,” she said.

She said that OCA’s proposed zoning amendment is an important initial step the town should take to begin to remedy generations of exclusionary zoning practices.”

Third-year Yale Law School student Karen Anderson (pictured) said that she and her colleagues spent hours going through state records, newspaper articles, and decades of meeting minutes from Woodbridge’s zoning commission to understand why the town has the restrictive zoning code it currently does.

Woodbridge’s current exclusion isn’t an accident of history or a relic carelessly left in place,” she said. On the contrary, Woodbridge actually chose again and again to keep these restrictions in place, even as it became more and more clear that doing so was unlawful.”

She said that, in the 1950s, the town’s zoning commission acknowledged that Woodbridge had uniquely restrictive residential zoning for the area. In the 1960s, the town increased the minimum lot size for single-family homes to 1.5 acres, earning the well-deserved reputation for snob zoning.” In the 1970s, the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities raised red flags” about Woodbridge’s ban on multi-family housing as discriminatory against protected classes by keeping housing affordable. And in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Woodbridge rejected proposals that would have loosened restrictions and allowed for multi-family housing continually failed over fears that building such housing would change the character of the town” and usher in a flood of families from New Haven, West Haven, and Hamden.

The history shows us that it’s not an accident that Woodbridge’s zoning has stayed so exclusionary,” she continued. It’s not an accident that Woodbridge is so much whiter and wealthier than the surrounding region.”

Furthermore, Anderson said and OCA’s press release stressed, Woodbridge’s current zoning code is in violation of the Connecticut Zoning Enabling Act’s requirements to encourage opportunities for multifamily dwellings,” promote housing for both low and moderate-income households,” and to do so for all residents of the municipality and the planning region.”

New Haven public housing chief Karen DuBois-Walton (pictured) stressed just how much of a need there is for affordable housing in the region, not just in New Haven.

She said that Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven currently provides affordable housing for over 6,000 families. She said the organization’s waitlist currently has over 10,000 families on it, and that that number would easily double if the housing authority reopened its waitlist for new applicants.

Of that 10,000-family waitlist, she said, close to a third are families that come from surrounding towns, including some of the most exclusive and wealthy suburbs like Woodbridge, Orange, Bethany, and Guilford.

The need exists everywhere,” she said, and the lack of affordable housing in places like Woodbridge is currently pushing families into homelessness, or doubling up with relatives or friends, or into substandard housing, or into living arrangements where people pay far more than they can afford to get something decent.”


It is undeniable that cities like New Haven are doing more than their fair share to meet the regional housing need,” said Yale Law School professor and newly confirmed city Affordable Housing Commissioner Anika Singh Lemar (pictured). It is also true that exclusionary zoning practices in places like Woodbridge put intense stress on the New Haven housing market” to meet that regional need.

When asked about the groundbreaking for The Whit” in Wooster Square,” Lemar said that new complex — as well as many others in New Haven — are examples of center cities absorbing the regional need for rental apartments, not just for affordable housing, but also for empty nesters.

I’m proud of New Haven for everything they’ve done to welcome housing to that city,” she said, but they shouldn’t bear the brunt of housing the entire region.”

OCA Board of Directors Co-Chair Connie Royster (pictured) ended her comments by quoting from a July newsletter column written by Woodbridge First Selectman Bethany Heller.

Our town has an opportunity to participate in a new burst of energy, a movement that crosses racial, ethnic, political and generational shifts,” Royster said, quoting Heller. A movement that binds us together by our common humanity. A movement poised to inspire new policies, new legislation. That’s our responsibility.”

Royster looked out at the media and fellow affordable housing advocates attending the presser.

Today’s proposal to end exclusionary zoning,” she said, putting down Heller’s quote and picking up in her own words, will help recreate neighborhoods in just this spirit.”

When reached by phone after the presser, Heller declined comment on the specifics of the 135-page zoning amendment application, as she had just received it this afternoon and still had to read it. She also said it’s her policy not to comment on pending applications before they receive a full hearing by the zoning commission.

As for the larger concern about exclusionary zoning in Woodbridge and the proposed allowance of multi-family housing as one tool to end suburban segregation, she said, I have to think about that.” She said she had no comment at this time.

The Woodbridge zoning commission is slated to formally receive the proposed housing amendment application during its regularly scheduled meeting this upcoming Monday, with a full public hearing on the issue likely taking place later this fall.

Tags:

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

Avatar for CityYankee2

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for Ben Trachten

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for CityYankee2

Avatar for robn

Avatar for Mike D.

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for Heather C.

Avatar for Ben Trachten

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy

Avatar for George Polk

Avatar for anonymous

Avatar for Kevin McCarthy