Thomas Breen file photo
Kim Hart and Claudette Kidd at a 2018 affordable housing rally.
(Opinion)—A walk through New Haven tells a story about race in America.
If you make your way from one side of the city to the other, you will pass through neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly white, almost entirely Black, and predominately Latinx. Few areas of town will contain much diversity at all.
Walking our neighborhoods, it is impossible not to realize that New Haven is a segregated city.
Zooming out to Connecticut, the picture only gets worse. Nearly 70 percent of Connecticut’s Black residents live in New Haven and 10 other municipalities, while only around 15 percent of white residents live in those same places. The state’s suburbs are almost exclusively white, with little progress towards integration since the Civil Rights era.
As more Americans seek solutions to systemic racism, we cannot turn our backs to one of the most obvious race-related wrongs that remains today.
Housing segregation still exists in our communities, it is not getting better, and it continues because of state and local government policy. As a result of that segregation, families of different races have vastly different experiences with schools, access to jobs, and policing.
The policies that now segregate housing in Connecticut are not, as they were in the not-too-distant past, racially restrictive covenants and explicit bans on Black residents. Instead, they often take the form of seemingly innocuous zoning regulations like apartment bans, minimum lot sizes, parking minimums, and onerous review of new housing that make it impossible for most people of color to afford housing in predominantly white communities.
The poorest residents of the state, disproportionately people of color, are locked out of restrictively-zoned communities because suburban land use policies have practically banned any kind of naturally occurring or subsidized affordable housing. It is difficult to construct reasonably-priced housing, for instance, if the only house permitted is a large single-family home on a multi-acre lot. No wonder Connecticut’s suburbs are segregated, when living there typically requires purchasing a home out of reach for most people.
Parts of New Haven similarly have restrictive single-family zoning that make it effectively impossible for most Black and Brown residents to move in. There are also parts of the city where vulnerable communities of color face displacement by a steady stream of wealthier new arrivals. The forces that lead to displacement in New Haven are admittedly complex. But one of the central problems is the simple fact that, like in the suburbs, the city is not building enough housing.
Displacement happens when a growing population bids up the price of a limited amount of housing. Affordable housing becomes scarce as landlords charge more each month for homes that become more valuable due to increased demand. Long-term renters, often people of color, cannot keep pace with rising costs.
Downtown New Haven is one area that has increasingly become unaffordable to people with lower incomes.
When The Duncan closed, downtown gained a new bar and a hotel, but it lost 92 affordable single room occupancy units (SROs) for low-income residents. Some ended up with housing nearby. Others weren’t so lucky.
The Duncan was not an isolated incident. The replacement of low-income renters with hotels, fancier single-family homes, and anyone willing to pay higher rents has occurred in neighborhoods adjacent to downtown for years. In New Haven’s less wealthy neighborhoods of color, residents and community groups have watched these changes with apprehension. They are justifiably worried that if current patterns of development do not change, their homes will be next.
These patterns of segregation and displacement can be broken if municipalities build more housing of all types in wealthy communities. Allowing new housing there reduces the pressure on neighborhoods facing displacement. Instead of bidding up the cost of existing housing, new arrivals to the region can choose to live in new housing. And new reasonably-priced homes can give existing residents more choices as to where to live.
Cheaper housing fights displacement, and more opportunity to move fights segregation.
Housing Fix: Build, Build, Build
New Haven is already considering policies that could reduce displacement and segregation. Following the recent Affordable Housing Task Force report, the city has proposed an inclusionary zoning policy for downtown that would allow developers to construct more homes overall if they include affordable homes. This policy would incentivize developers to build much-needed affordable housing and tackle the city’s overall shortage of homes, driving down housing costs for everyone.
Inclusionary zoning is a first step in the right direction, but will not solve the housing and segregation crisis when Connecticut’s restrictive zoning has changed little in 100 years and displacement threatens so many in New Haven. A recent report from Yale Law School’s Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization urges New Haven and Connecticut to go further to solve economic and racial housing disparities.
Changing land use rules that zone out the poor can take many forms. The easiest change is allowing accessory dwelling units (ADUs).
ADUs are small dwellings on the same lot as a single-family home – they can take the form of a converted garage, basement apartment, secondary building in a backyard, or other small home addition. Right now, minimum square footage and parking requirements make building an ADU for a grandparent or other lower-income resident nearly impossible in New Haven and most other municipalities in the state.
In New Haven, City Plan Commission Chair Ed Mattison estimates that relaxing ADU laws could provide 200 new units of housing per year. ADUs’ low construction cost and relatively small size can keep rents affordable and provide housing for those who otherwise could not easily afford it. Allowing ADUs across Connecticut would increase the supply of housing, advance desegregation, and reduce displacement.
Second, Connecticut’s municipalities could allow homeowners to convert single-family dwellings to multifamily homes and build denser housing near public transit.
Like ADUs, small multifamily houses are a powerful tool to mitigate displacement and segregation because they increase the supply of less-expensive housing.
By allowing housing sized between single-family homes and apartment buildings, this “missing middle” housing can open up new neighborhoods to low-income renters and renters of color who would not be able to buy a 4,000 square foot home, but can afford to rent an apartment or purchase a 1,500 square foot condo.
As average household size continues to decrease, allowing homeowners to turn increasingly undesirable single-family McMansions into multiple two- and three-bedroom apartments can promote housing choice and opportunity. These changes improve affordability in wealthy neighborhoods without significantly changing the skyline or physical design.
Any policies that desegregate wealthy neighborhoods and prevent displacement from vulnerable communities could be more effective if local zoning relaxes minimum unit size and parking requirements.
Single-resident occupancy units like those in The Duncan provide the last rung on the housing ladder before homelessness, but are impossible to build in most of the city and state because of these regulations. It is time to follow the lead of Hartford and other cities and end ‘snob zoning’ that assumes every resident wants and can pay for multiple cars and large houses; these requirements make housing more expensive and even contribute to climate change by encouraging car ownership.
While New Haven can take many of these steps on its own, housing segregation and displacement desperately require state solutions. Restrictive suburban zoning has segregated low-income people and people of color within cities; nearly one in six homeless Connecticut residents live in New Haven alone. To reduce segregation, suburban communities need to open up. We can let all people, regardless of income or race, enjoy the neighborhoods we love.
Changing zoning practices will not eradicate housing segregation on its own. These policies are just one cause of exclusion among many; racial steering, for instance, is still all too common, and discrimination by landlords remains prevalent.
Land use reform is a single part of the work needed to make inclusion a reality in Connecticut.
New Haven and Connecticut have the power to change our history of housing segregation and displacement. Our housing crisis will not be solved overnight, but these housing policy proposals can show we are serious about finally bringing this sad chapter of our history to an end.
This is the third in a series of columns addressing displacement, all based on a report by the Housing and Community and Economic Development Clinic at Yale Law School. Past entries addressed how New Haven and Connecticut can protect tenants and how New Haven and Connecticut can avoid a foreclosure crisis.
Patrick Holland and Will Poff-Webster are both second-year law students at Yale Law School. They are law student interns with the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization’s Community & Economic Development Clinic. This op-ed does not necessarily represent the positions of Yale University or Yale Law School.