Urban Lawyer/Suburban Zoner Seeks Right ​“Balance” In Housing Controversy

What’s best for the Woodbridge neighbors he represents at night? What’s best for the low-income tenants he represents by day?

Those question face Yonatan Zamir as he finds himself playing a unique role in what has become a statewide debate about how ​“exclusionary zoning” laws protect economic and racial segregation.

Zamir lives in Woodbridge. As a town zoning commissioner, he helps make decisions about Woodbridge zoning rules that, critics say, keep out New Haveners. He also spends his days in New Haven helping low-income urban tenants, as a legal aid lawyer (and, as this story recounts, pressuring New Haven city government to do better by them).

Zamir’s conflicting perspectives were again on display Monday night, as he and fellow members of the Woodbridge Town Planning & Zoning Commission hosted yet another three-hour public hearing in a months-long dispute over whether or not New Haven’s suburban neighbor to the west should change its zoning laws.

Zamir spoke up during the hearing to question not the goal of affordable housing, but the most effective, and environmentally sustainable, ways to achieve it in the suburbs.

Civil rights attorneys and Yale Law School students are seeking to change the local zoning regulations to allow for multi-family housing in every residential district in the disproportionately white and wealthy town. The case has sparked the interest and participation of New Haveners concerned about the regional roots of racism and housing segregation.

Zamir, who is 44, declined to comment for this story outside of what he said during the public hearing itself.

His colleagues on the board include an investment advisor, a banker, a personal injury lawyer, and the former commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). Zamir is an attorney with New Haven Legal Assistance Association with a focus on housing law who, during his day job, represents low-income, predominantly Black and brown city residents fighting for access to safe, quality, affordable housing.

The civil rights attorneys and Yale Law students pushing this two-pronged rezoning proposal claim to be advocating for that same constituency in their bid to overturn the suburb’s effective ban on multi-family housing.

The argument between them and the town lasted three hours at Monday’s night’s hearing. No decisions were made; the discussion is to continue at another hearing later this month.

What About The Environment?

Two hours into Monday night’s public hearing, Zamir acknowledged ​“the elephant in the room” in this rezoning debate: Woodbridge’s ​“long history of structural racism”— a concept that the civil rights attorneys and law students have emphasized every chance they get.

The rezoning proposal’s advocates have argued that certain zoning regulations, that require minimum lot sizes of 1.5 acres and that favor single-family houses while effectively banning multi-family developments, come from a long history of using land-use laws to keep towns like Woodbridge wealthy white enclaves that bar access to Black and brown potential future residents.

“I’m cognizant of the fact that we as a town have summarily and consistently rejected any attempt” to amend Woodbridge’s zoning laws to promote multi-family housing, Zamir said. ​“I understand why this proposal comes about in the way that it does.”

But he pushed back: Yes, the town has time and again over the past few decades refused to adopt zoning laws that would encourage the development of multi-family affordable housing. But that does not negate the reality that two-thirds of Woodbridge sits in a public supply watershed that provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands of residents in the region.

And it does not defy the fact that the town has limited public water and sewer lines, he said. Or that many properties rely upon well water and on-site septic systems.

Just as he’s done during each public hearing on this matter, Zamir spoke calmly and respectfully — neither bucking up against the Yale Law students as politically motivated outsiders (as some members of the public and commission have intimated) nor accepting everything that those applicants have asserted as fact.

He said he has yet to hear a convincing argument from the applicants that allowing every residential district in town to support multi-family housing developments as of right is an environmentally sustainable solution to bringing the suburb into compliance with state and federal affordable housing laws.

“I think it’s important that you understand that folks see this as a complex issue,” he told the applicants in a five-minute ​“soliloquy.”

“I have not yet had my questions answered about how we can accomplish what we need to do without doing a wholesale change across every part of town.”

Zamir said there appear to be a variety of other zoning policy changes that the commission could adopt to promote affordable housing without endangering the town’s environment.

One could be to increase the legal maximum size of a local accessory dwelling unit, which is currently capped at 600 square feet. ​“That seems to me to be an obvious suggestion to allow for the existing infrastructure as we have it now” to meet some of the regional affordable housing needs, without relying on big new developments far from the town center.

Another option would be to allow for multi-family developments as of right in certain parts of town that have reliable access to municipal water, sewer, and public transportation.

“I think what people are understandably afraid of,” he said about some of the suburban pushback to the proposal so far, ​“is that there will be massive changes in terms of what physically their neighborhood might look like.”

A letter recently submitted by the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority outlining concerns about the potential environmental impact of the rezoning proposal as written only heightened his own sensitivity to these fears.

Is this single family-to-multi family zoning conversion in every residential district in town really the best and only way to move forward right now? he asked.

Not The Only Remedy

A Chicago native who has also worked as a Bronx legal aid attorney and as a staffer to left-leaning former Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Zamir moved with his family to Woodbridge in 2013 to be closer to his wife’s family. He has sat on the town’s zoning commission for the past three years.

Zamir said he sees his responsibility as a zoning commissioner and local land-use lawmaker to find the ​“balance” between promoting affordable housing development as stipulated by state and federal law, and educating himself to the greatest extent possible on the potential impact the commission’s decisions might have on vulnerable environmental resources like the town’s watershed.

In response, Open Communities Alliance (OCA) Executive Director Erin Boggs and Yale Law School student Hannah Abelow (pictured) stressed that this proposal is not — and should not be — the only remedy for Woodbridge’s lack of compliance with state and federal affordable housing laws.

However, Abelow insisted, ​“we think this is an actionable, practical first step that the town can take immediately within existing bulk requirements, within existing lot sizes” for single-family homes. The public health code would still serve as a backstop for any impractical and potentially environmentally hazardous development, she said.

This is an ​“initial step” that the town can and should take to begin to finally start promoting the development of affordable housing, and finally open up to a more economically and racially diverse population.

Are you saying that this proposal is just an interim solution? Commission Chair Rob Klee (pictured) asked. Would the applicants be OK with Woodbridge scrapping this zoning update as soon as the town goes through its state-mandated process of developing a town-wide affordable housing plan before July 2022?

“This is just that initial, first step to head off the immediate concerns” about the town’s lack of compliance with state and federal affordable housing law, said Boggs (pictured).

Allowing for single family-to-multi family conversion is not the only means by which the town can promote the development of affordable housing. Other towns and cities have adopted inclusionary zoning ordinances — whereby developers must set aside a percentage of newly constructed apartments at affordable rates. Others have legalized accessory dwelling units (ADUs), thereby allowing for the conversion of attics and garages into legal living spaces.

“What we’re suggesting is that the larger fair share number over 10 years needs to happen through a number of different strategies.”

Nevertheless, Abelow said, this single-to-multi rezoning proposal is the one that the applicants have put forth — and the one that the commission must decide on.

“We’re not making an argument that this is the only way to do it. We’re saying: This is the argument before you. We think it’s a good way.” And based on Woodbridge’s history of not acting on affordable housing rezoning proposals in the past, this would be one immediate action the town could take to start to work towards becoming a more inclusive, and legally compliant, municipality.

“Part of the reason for needing to push a particular solution,” Boggs said, ​“is just the history of the town,” and its ​“failure to have any real solutions” on its own.

“This Is Modern-Day Segregation”

During the first hour of Monday night’s public hearing, a handful of New Haven residents (virtually) made the trip to the suburbs to testify in support of the rezoning proposal.

“The need for affordable housing is incredibly high,” said Elm City Communities/Housing Authority of New Haven Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton.

She said that the city housing authority currently serves roughly 6,000 families, and has a waiting list ​“tens of thousands” of families long. Roughly one third of those on the waiting list come from towns outside of New Haven, she said. That’s because ​“affordable housing does not exist in towns like Woodbridge and other surrounding towns.”

This proposal represents a ​“significant step forward in correcting disparities,” she said.

New Haven high school student Jaeana Bethea (pictured above, at left) said that ​“Woodbridge’s zoning situation is very racist. Point blank, period.”

She said concerns around increased traffic and overwhelmed septic systems are ​“just excuses that are very minimal issues that can be fixed very easily.”

“Woodbridge is a white town that is very segregated and very scared of integration,” she continued.

The civil rights attorneys and Yale law students have pointed out that that, of Woodbridge’s 3,478 current housing units, only 43 are recognized by the state as ​“affordable.” And 30 of those units are limited to seniors, meaning that only 13 are open to families with children. They’ve also pointed out that only 0.2 percent of the town is currently open for the construction of duplexes, and nowhere in town allows for larger multi-family developments as of right.

“This is modern-day segregation,” Bethea said, ​“and it’s quite honestly disgusting.”

Maria Solomon, an African American woman from New Haven, has had the support of federal Section 8 housing subsidies for 19 years. She was born and raised in New Haven, she said, though her children go to school in North Branford and North Haven.

“With me being a voucher holder, I always wanted to look outside of New Haven, to get the experience of not just having my children go to school in [the suburbs], but of how it would feel actually living in a neighborhood outside” of the city.

“Unfortunately, that hasn’t been successful,” she said. Because she has not been able to find a place to live outside of New Haven where her Section 8 housing voucher would provide enough of a subsidy to help her afford rent.

“My question is: What’s wrong with us?” Solomon asked. ​“We’re people like they are. What can really seriously be the issue that myself and my children would not be accepted in Woodbridge?”

The commission’s next special meeting on the matter is scheduled for March 18, when Zamir and both camps will continue the debate.

See below for previous coverage of this Woodbridge rezoning proposal.

• Open-Housing Debate: Define Racism
• Open-Housing Quest Critics Champion Local Control
• Suburban Zoning Debate Gets Personal
• City, ​‘Burb Clash On Open-Housing Quest
• Urban Housing Lauded; Suburbs Challenged

More info on related issues, organizations:

Local Act: Empower underserved communities in Connecticut
Local Learn: New Haven community wealth-building initiatives
National Act: Organizations that support community development