Housing Q: Why’s The Rent So Damn High?

New Haven tenants are squeezed by too high rents, too little pay, too dangerous living conditions, and too few apartments.

A panel of housing experts probed how the city got to this predicament — and how the state can take action so renters can find some relief.

Dozens of elected officials, mayoral candidates, community organizers, and tenants living paycheck to paycheck filled a Q House conference room at 197 Dixwell Ave. on Thursday evening for the first in a series of panel discussions on housing policy hosted by the Housing Authority of New Haven and its umbrella organization, Elm City Communities (ECC).

“Housing is a basic need and we’re not going to meet any of the other goals for our community if we don’t address the issue of housing affordability,” said Housing Authority/ECC president Karen DuBois Walton, introducing the event. ​“I believe we won’t craft the right solutions unless we understand the roots of the problem that’s facing us.”

The panel, moderated by ECC Housing Policy Manager Will Viederman, featured ECC Executive Vice President Shenae Draughn, Yale Law Professor Anika Singh Lemar, and community organizer Kerry Ellington.

Viederman said he titled the event ​“The Rent Is Too Damn High” in an echo of the New York City-based political party founded by housing activist Jimmy McMillan, who unsuccessfully ran for both mayor and governor. ​“The rents in New York City when he was running in 2010 are lower than the rents in New Haven now,” Viederman said.

After dramatic pandemic-era rent spikes, New Haven’s median rent has cooled slightly to about $1,700 monthly for all kinds of apartments, according to an analysis of current apartments on the market by Zillow.

That amount is still much higher than the median rent in 2019, which the Census’ American Community Survey calculated to be $1,273 in New Haven.

The three panelists sketched out the policies — and absent regulations — that led to New Haven’s affordability crisis.

Among the takeaways? 

Public housing development won’t be enough to combat the dearth of affordable apartments. Current systems of regulating housing code are falling short for low-income tenants. And while municipal and federal efforts are important, the state government may have the most power to impact affordable housing development in Connecticut.

After hearing these ideas, pastor and former certified nursing assistant Jessie Gates shook with fury as she raised her hand to ask a question. She pleaded for policymakers to address the dearth of affordable housing with more urgency. ​“Let them live like we live now and I bet you something will get done,” she said.

New housing in New Haven has been built for ​“Yale professors,” she said. There needs to be housing for ​“home health care providers, Burger Kings, janitors.”

Not Enough New Housing

Singh Lemar argued that a shortage of housing units across the state is in large part responsible for the fact that rents are rising in Connecticut.

Over the course of the 1960s, about 200,000 building permits were issued in the state. The number of permits per decade has dramatically declined to about 50,000 in the 2010s, Singh Lemar said. 

Building permit data is one way to trace how housing production has slowed down across the state throughout the past several decades.

New affordable housing has become so rare in some parts of the state that the creation of two Habitat-for-Humanity-built duplexes in Fairfield County made the news, Singh Lemar pointed out. Fairfield First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick told CT Insider that allowing those four new apartments to be built was ​“really a home run, and a prime example of that towns can do things on their own” — indicating the unusual nature of producing a meager four housing units in the wealthy suburb.

Meanwhile, housing has become increasingly unaffordable. 

In 2016, as Singh Lemar cited, federal data indicated that 220,685 households in Connecticut were experiencing a ​“severe cost burden” in paying for housing, meaning that they were paying more than 50 percent of their income toward housing.

Over the pandemic, many tenants faced dramatic rent raises — including Viederman himself, who said his landlord raised rent by 30 percent in just two years.

“A thirty percent increase in rent? I equate that to mismanagement,” said Draughn. 

As an executive at the city’s public housing agency, which is New Haven’s largest landlord, ​“we make it work with that 2 percent [rent] increase,” Draughn said. Landlords that raise the rent in increments of 30 percent or more may complain that they can’t afford not to spike the rent that high, Draughn argued, but ​“you actually can. You just want to keep your same profit margin.”

“What are the true expenses?” she asked. ​“How much is enough profit?

The scarcity of housing across the state gives landlords more power to raise rent, Singh Lemar argued.

When renters have fewer options, those who can afford higher rents will settle and often strain to meet a higher cost. 

“Why do landlords charge 30 percent more rent? Because they can,” Singh Lemar said. ​“We have to flip the switch so that they can’t.”

Rethinking AMI, "Fair Share"

While state lawmakers proposed multiple policies this year that would have capped annual rent increases for residential tenants, those rent cap measures appear to have stalled.

The panelists spoke to a host of other policies that local and state lawmakers could implement.

Ellington called into question the use of the federally determined Area Median Income (AMI) metric to define what ​“affordability” means in New Haven. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development calculates the local AMI based on income levels not only in New Haven itself, but in Meriden and nearby suburbs as well. That system skews the AMI wealthier than the median of what New Haven residents actually make.

Ellington called for ​“a city definition that actually aligns with our affordability” to be used when negotiating with developers for low-income housing. ​“We should be able to live in the neighborhoods that we’re from and built.”

Draughn, meanwhile, advocated for the city to reexamine its Inclusionary Zoning policy, which requires five to 10 percent of new or significantly rehabilitated housing units to be made available for people making up to 50 percent of the AMI (or a two-person household making $45,050, for example.)

The ordinance creates tax incentives and alters parking and floor area regulations for complying buildings.

“We’re giving up something of value and getting very little,” Draughn said.

She noted that Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers — one of the few programs that guarantees that tenants are paying no more than 30 percent of their income toward rent — are not funded nearly enough to meet an extremely high demand, with a wait list in New Haven alone of 25,000 households.

Singh Lemar spoke to a need for Connecticut suburbs to step up their housing production so that the burden of housing creation is not solely borne by urban districts.

The state, Singh Lemar said, could facilitate that with something like the ​“Fair Share Bill” that the Open Communities Alliance has proposed in the past: a law requiring every municipality to create and meet affordable housing development goals.

Draughn boosted another frequently-proposed state bill that would allow housing authorities to build affordable housing complexes in areas outside the bounds of their jurisdictions. That would enable the Housing Authority of New Haven/ECC to develop affordable housing in suburbs like Hamden, where there’s more space conducive for such a building.

“The solutions here are at the state level,” said Singh Lemar. And funding more public housing can only be part of that plan, she said, since there’s not enough public money to support the amount of housing that needs to be developed. Private and non-profit developers need to step up.

“Our governor’s basically been silent on this issue,” she added. ​“He needs to hear from people who don’t live in Greenwich.”

Existing Housing In Disrepair

Drawing on her past experience as a community organizer with New Haven Legal Assistance Association, a role in which she spoke with hundreds of tenants in precarious housing situations, Ellington called attention to the conditions of the housing that’s currently available to low-income tenants.

Ellington noted that large landlord companies, often funded or managed by out-of-town investors, have been rapidly swallowing up properties across the city over the past two decades. That’s led to deteriorating conditions in properties no longer owned by people with a stake in low-income communities, especially in majority-Black and Brown neighborhoods, she argued.

To adequately respond to this trend, Ellington called on the city to invest more resources in the Livable City Initiative (LCI) department’s housing inspection system. ​“Our system is failing us.”

Singh Lemar echoed this opinion. While LCI has lately funneled resources into building owner-occupied homes for middle-income residents, ​“I don’t know that they should be doing development,” Singh Lemar said — arguing that the housing inspection component of the department is fulfilling a more urgent need.

In addition to increasing inspections, Ellington advocated for a more accessible system by which tenants can report housing code violations — starting with creating an online form, rather than requiring tenants to submit hard copies of paperwork to City Hall.

After the event, she elaborated on one recourse available to tenants in unsafe living conditions: After filing a report with LCI — whether or not the city ever responds — tenants can wait 21 days and then file to pay their rent to housing court rather than to their landlord. Ellington said that New Haven Legal Assistance Association can assist tenants with that process.

The topic of living conditions in lower-rent housing came up during the Question-and-Answer portion of the event.

“I can barely afford $900 a month,” said Pastor Jessie Gates. ​“You take living in whatever the condition is because it’s $900.” Whenever she’s found a safe, hazard-free place to live, ​“I can’t afford it.”

Community organizer Remidy Shareef proposed that advocates take on more radical protest approaches — perhaps even camping out at the governor’s house. Right now, ​“it feels like we’re digging our wheels in the mud,” he said. ​“They’re not gonna change unless we do something totally different.”

Myra Smith, a housing activist with the homeless shelter provider Christian Community Action, the advocacy group Mothers and Other For Justice, and other local organizations, spoke both as a current homeless shelter worker and as a mother who has herself experienced homelessness.

“The main thing we’ve been hearing is ​‘There’s no funding,’ ” Smith said. ​“Covid proved that was a lie. Where was all this magical money before?”

“I answer the phones every single day [at Christian Community Action] and it breaks my heart. Our shelter is full.” While building new housing costs money, so does the homeless shelter system, she argued — and the medical care from both physical illness and emotional trauma caused by housing insecurity. 

“People say housing development is expensive — homelessness is expensive,” Smith said.