Which Way To YIMBYtown?

Expand housing in industrial zones. 

Make it easier to build small-scale developments.

Pull back on parking mandates.

Double down on mother-in-law apartments.

Those are a few of the zoning changes that sit at the top of the respective wish lists of two local housing-policy aficionados when asked what would make New Haven a city that truly supports build build building.

The Elm City housing wonks, lawyer Ben Trachten and former state legislative staffer Kevin McCarthy, batted those ideas around during separate interviews with the Independent in anticipation of a major self-described ​“pro-homes” event coming to the city in a few months.

In September, New Haven will play host to the real ​“YIMBYtown,” a national conference of policymakers and advocates from the pro-zoning reform ​“Yes In My Backyard” movement.

The YIMBies will gather in New Haven not exactly to praise the city but to spotlight the ways it and other places like it are well-situated to build more and denser housing around public transportation and walkable infrastructure.

In 2025, the Elm City still has some of the oldest housing stock in the country and builds new developments at a rate that hasn’t kept pace with demand in a state now facing a 100,000-unit shortfall. In recent years, locals have been reckoning with the city’s housing affordability and quality crisis that has persisted despite recent moves to fix it, including the passage of a landmark ​“inclusionary zoning” (IZ) bill in 2022 that took years of studies and debate to draft. (The IZ ordinance provides a slew of incentives to developers to set aside affordable units in new buildings, but so far hasn’t translated into real-world affordability gains.)

Among the New Haveners engaged on the issue are McCarthy and Trachten, both fixtures of the Elm City’s housing world and old friends who, when they’re not lining up to testify late into the night at the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), enjoy chatting about zoning laws over tea in their spare time. 

McCarthy’s a former principal analyst for the Connecticut General Assembly with decades of experience drafting urban policy. Trachten, a former chair of New Haven’s BZA, is the land use attorney of choice for most New Haven developers looking for approvals from the city’s zoning board.

Trachten: "Low-Hanging Fruit" In Light Industrial Zones

New Haven, Trachten says, has at its fingertips huge swathes of developable land in ​“light industrial zones,” like the Mill River District, but current zoning rules have held up the process of converting ​“low-hanging fruit” in the city’s former manufacturing corridors into built-up neighborhoods. 

Per the city ordinance, residential use is not allowed in industrial zones except in existing structures that are at least 50,000 square feet large. Building other types of housing in those zones requires a special permit from the City Plan Commission, holding up smaller-scale residential development.

“The light industrial zones were overlaid on an existing city,” says Trachten, ​“And you know, you have multi-family housing in light industrial zones already. You have industrial zones that have no industry left in them, and it just doesn’t make sense.”

Another quick zoning fix, he says, would be to up the size threshold –– which now sits at 5,000 square feet –– for site plan review for new multifamily dwellings, making it less expensive and logistically cumbersome for small projects to move forward.

“The cutoff right now is, if you want to build a two family, you just need administrative review,” says Trachten. ​“When you go to a three or more, you need full site plan […] We have a zoning, City Plan department staff that can review these applications for compliance […] Projects of let’s say five units or below really have no neighborhood impact when they’ve received zoning approval, or they don’t require where they’re as of right.”

And then there’s the question of what to do about parking, which the current zoning laws mandate more of when adding a handful of new dwelling units to an already-standing house. Filing for exemptions to that requirement, Trachten says, represent ballpark ​“90 percent” of the appeals he advocates for at the zoning board. ​“There should be an assumption that giving someone relief for one or two parking spaces has absolutely no impact on the neighborhood or the traffic pattern,” he says.

McCarthy: Time For ADU Updates

Another place in the city’s code to potentially capitalize on as a way of building more affordable units, according to McCarthy, are the rules governing the creation of new ​“accessory dwelling units” (ADU), sometimes known as mother-in-law apartments.

The city’s updated ADU ordinance, passed in 2021, now allows for the as-of-right conversion of attics, basements, and garages into stand-alone units, though the current rules still make it so that a property owner has to file for zoning relief to do those renovations if their building is under 4,000 square feet or if they want to attach a new structure to their existing single or multi-family home. The ADU-enabling law is also limited to owner-occupants only.

“One sensible thing would be splitting some of the larger apartments into smaller apartments,” says McCarthy. ​“But that takes serious money. If you want to split a big apartment into two smaller apartments, you’re obviously gonna have to build at least the kitchen for the new unit and probably a bathroom. And that’s tens of thousands of dollars. In some cases, the building may not support that, so you have this mismatch and part of the motivation for the ADU ordinance was that mismatch. One number, which amazes me, is that 25 percent of the owner-occupied units, and these are almost entirely homes, have one person living in them.”

The Elicker administration proposed a suite of changes to the ADU law in January 2024, looking to amend it to make it easier to build these types of housing units. The alders have held committee hearings on the proposal, but have not yet taken a final vote.

Another place where recent updates to the code haven’t yet borne fruit, per McCarthy, is the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance passed by the alders three years ago. 

The ordinance requires new buildings with at least 10 apartments that are constructed downtown to set aside 5 percent of units for renters with Section 8 subsidies and another 10 percent of units for renters making no more than 50 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), which, as of the most recent data, is about $51,450 for a family of four. It also requires new buildings with at least 10 apartments that are constructed adjacent to downtown or in Westville, and new buildings with at least 75 apartments that are constructed elsewhere in the city, to set aside 5 percent of units for renters making no more than 50 percent AMI.

The law includes a host of incentives — such as density bonuses and waived parking minimums and tax assessment deferrals — intended to make it more appealing for developers to comply.

On balance, according to McCarthy, the way the IZ law is set up still translates to a surge in market rate rentals with a smaller dent made for affordable units, and, ultimately, at least in the short-run, a net loss for affordability.

“A developer can come in, do a substantial rehab, charge market rents for all of the units except those that have to be affordable,” says McCarthy. ​“And so depending on where that is, that would be five or ten percent of the units. You have a net reduction in affordable units that way.”

However many affordable units the city does end up creating through IZ –– and so far that number is still zero –– McCarthy adds that they ought to be designated for current city residents, with preference for those already on the Housing Authority waitlist.