Justin Elicker has heard New Haven’s cry for more affordable housing — and hatched a couple of ideas to promote it.
Elicker, who takes office Jan. 1 as New Haven’s 51st mayor, said during an interview Friday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” that he has repeatedly heard about rising rents and lack of affordable homes during his interactions with the public during the transition period.
As he considers “inclusionary zoning” and other proposed solutions, he is also advocating the creation of a statewide fund to support the construction of local affordable housing developments. He also suggested that developers could be offered an alternative to inclusionary zoning requirements by contributing to a separate local fund for other builders to construct afford projects in New Haven.
“What I think the vision for a successful city should be is one where we don’t have one neighborhood that’s poor people and one neighborhoods that’s rich people,” Elicker said in the interview. The city should be economically integrated.
“We’re looking at what’s the best way to formulate a requirement that large developments include affordable housing without disincentivizing development. … We’re looking to ask the state to create an affordable housing fund to support affordable housing in the region.”
The Board of Alders also included references to a local affordable housing fund designed to accomplish that very same goal at a municipal level when it passed an updated version of the city tax assessment deferral program.
During the transition Elicker has also met with the mayors of Waterbury, Hartford, and Bridgeport. He said they spoke of the need to lobby the state for more aid to cities. That includes seeking greater aid to cities under the state’s Payment of Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) program, which reimburses municipalities for a portion of tax revenues lost on properties owned by colleges, universities, and state government. Elicker proposed Friday that PILOT be expanded to include public-housing developments owned and run by the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH).
Click on the audio file to watch the full interview with Elicker, in which he discusses his hiring process, crime, and avoiding lawsuits by training government managers better about how to support employees and handle conflicts.