Housing Authority Expansion Debated

At passionate state hearing:
• New Haveners push to break suburban housing/race barriers.
• Suburbanites push back vs. allowing housing authorities to build in their towns.
• ​“Take bold action”; ​“This has nothing to do with race.”

That cry came during an hours-long debate around affordable housing, racial segregation, and municipal zoning independence Thursday morning and afternoon at an online public hearing hosted by the state legislature’s Housing Committee.

Over 115 people signed up to testify at the virtual public hearing, which was video-livestreamed on YouTube and CT‑N.

The committee’s agenda covered 19 different proposed housing-related bills touching everything from resources for the homeless to rent control to protections for tenants with criminal records.

Two potential pieces of legislation won the lion’s share of attention during the hearing’s first six-plus hours.

Those were Proposed House Bill 6430: An Act Concerning Housing Authority Jurisdiction and Proposed House Bill 804: An Act Concerning Inclusion In Certain Communities.

The former was introduced by the Housing Committee and mirrors an identical piece of legislation backed by all nine of New Haven’s state legislators and representatives this general session. The bill would allow public housing authorities — like New Haven’s Elm City Communities — the ability to build within a 15 mile radius of the municipality where they were created. Current state law limits housing authority jurisdiction to their town or city of origin.

The latter proposed bill was introduced by South Windsor State Sen. Saud Anwar and so far exists only as a high-level list of affordable housing-related concepts. The bill lists its goals as ​“to address several issues surrounding affordable housing, multiunit residential buildings, sewerage systems, housing authority jurisdiction, training for certain municipal officials involved in planning and zoning decisions and compliance with municipal zoning regulations.”

Many of those proposals have been championed by a statewide coalition called Desegregate CT. They’ve also been supported by New Haven zoning reformers as of late, most notably in an ongoing effort convince the Town of Woodbridge to change its ​“exclusionary zoning” laws to make it easier for the development of multi-family housing in a leafy suburb currently dominated by single-family homes. That would make certain multi-family developers permissible as of right, as opposed to only after a project-specific public hearing.

“My support of H.B. 6430 stems from my outrage and concern about the lack of affordable housing in our state, the continued segregation of our communities,” city housing authority president Karen DuBois-Walton wrote in testimony submitted in advance to the committee.

“Further, my support stems from my knowledge that allowing PHAs to develop as any other developer can is a reasonable and sensible step forward that can be taken this session.”

(Updated: DuBois-Walton made that same argument at around 6 p.m. Thursday when she got a chance to testify at the hours-long virtual hearing. This bill is simply asking the state to treat housing authorities ​“with the same free market rules that any other developer would face when pursuing a development deal,” she said.)

Mayor Justin Elicker (pictured) agreed during his testimony towards the beginning of Thursday’s virtual hearing.

“It will not take away any local control or give cities power over surrounding suburbs,” he said. Rather H.B. 6430 would create more desperately needed affordable housing across Connecticut, ​“reduce our state’s deep segregation and concentrated poverty, and allow more residents who do not live in cities easier access to the housing assistance they need.”

He said that there are currently 30,000 people on the New Haven housing authority wait list, and that roughly a third of those people live outside of New Haven. ​“Think about that,” he said. ​“Nearly 10,000 people are in your towns and cities and can’t find housing there.” Allowing housing authorities to expand where they can operate could directly address some of that shortfall outside of urban centers.

Their support for the bill was a minority opinion among those who turned out to testify remotely on Thursday.

More emblematic of the more than two dozen testimonies offered on these proposed bills by the late afternoon was that of Kimberly Fiorello (pictured), a Republican state representative from Greenwich.

“Home rule is nothing more than people not wanting to be bossed around, and that feeling is nonpartisan and it’s a basic human feeling,” she said. She said any bill that changes the current local control over zoning-related approvals would ​“fundamentally change something that is a part of the fabric of what makes Connecticut, Connecticut.”

Or that of New Canaan architect Cristina Aguirre-Ross, who described both proposed bills as presenting a ​“one-fits all approach” and that doesn’t ​“allow for diversity and growth at a pace that is prudent and fiscally responsible.”

Or that of Shelton Planning and Zoning Commission Chair Virginia Harger. ​“Connecticut communities do not stand to benefit from the elimination of local control with the state dictating which kind of housing is needed and where it is needed,” she said. Let ​“common-sense, market-driven solutions” determine that.

Or, in a more bluntly articulated response, that of Canton Republican Town Committee Chair Arnold Goldman. ​“This has nothing to do with race,” he said about the housing authority and zoning restructuring bills. ​“But everything to do with an assertion of ideological power beyond an elected jurisdiction.”

Or, in an even more panic-inducing call to arms, that of former Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst, who is an Orange-based attorney and one of the chief opponents to the Woodbridge rezoning effort.

“If this legislation is passed,” he said about H.B. 6430 and H.B. 804, ​“if the governor signs this into law, I believe you are going to see a bipartisan uprising in this state the likes of which you have never seen.”

Throughout the hearing, committee co-chairs State Rep. Brandon McGee and State Sen. Rick Lopes (pictured) sought to keep the proposed reforms and alarmed response in a broader social and historical context in Connecticut.

“These bills are not to destroy the characters of these towns,” Lopes said. ​“They are to investigate and look at why, in a state such as ours, one of the wealthiest states in the country, that we are guaranteed a very high standard of living, a very high standard of economic potential and economic opportunity, a very high standard of healthcare if we live in about 140 of the towns and cities across the state. But if people live in the 10 poor communities in this state, they are not guaranteed.”

“We are not trying to force anything on smaller communities,” he reiterated. ​“It’s opening up the discussion about why we have such an unbalanced state and how we can make this state better.”

After a particularly heated debate around whether or not zoning laws should be allowed to explicitly protect a town’s ​“character,” McGee (pictured) reminded those watching and listening and testifying of how that word has been used historically to enforce racial segregation.

“It’s important to understand that this conversation is also about equity, race, and the long history of inequities in the housing system throughout the State of Connecticut,” he said. ​“We always have to be mindful of that during this particular conversation about affordable housing.”

In response to concerns by Westport State Sen. Tony Hwang that some of the affordable housing and zoning reform-related proposals on the table Thursday represented too much action taken too quickly by state government, New Haven State Sen. Gary Winfield (pictured) stressed that waiting and waiting has its costs too.

“The people who have the ability to wait oftentimes will think we can do this, figure it out over time. Meanwhile, the people who don’t have the ability to wait are suffering.”

Eminent Domain Excluded; ​“8 – 30g Is Already In Place”

In her written testimony in support of the housing authority jurisdiction bill as well as during her remote testimony delivered Thursday hearing, DuBois-Walton zeroed in on how the bill ​“seeks to level the playing field with other developers and does not seek to further advantage housing authority developers.”

Current state law limits housing authorities — which leverage federal funding to subsidize rent for low-income tenants at housing authority-owned properties and in the private rental market — to work only within the bounds of the town or city where they were created.

H.B. 6430 would expand that jurisdiction to include a 15-mile radius surrounding the municipality of origin. It would also limit housing development authorities to only ​“high” or ​“very high” opportunity areas within that expanded jurisdiction.

And it specifically does not allow housing authorities to exercise eminent domain when looking to acquire properties within that expanded jurisdiction.

“Housing authorities have become prolific and qualified developers of affordable housing,” she wrote. ​“We have had to be creative in our approaches and as a result we are the primary developers of mixed income housing and yet we are restricted from operating within the private market as any other developer by these archaic jurisdictional lines.”

DuBois-Walton argued that public housing authorities should be treated like any other developer looking to acquire a property, develop a plan to create housing, and then pursue necessary local approvals.

“While other developers may struggle to figure out how to make the development project affordable, housing authorities who have the federal subsidy needed to do so are told ​“not in my backyard” while families in need go unhoused or continue to pay far more than they can afford often for substandard housing.”

She wrote that an estimated 40 percent of Connecticut families are rent-burdened, and only one out of every four families that are eligible to receive housing subsidies are currently receiving them.

“This [housing] shortage is impacting every community — urban, suburban and rural. We must take bold action.”

During her Thursday evening testimony to the committee, she stressed that ​“it requires bold action to undo the very intentional work done over years through land use and zoning to create exclusionary communities.”

State Department of Housing Commissioner, and long-time New Haven affordable housing nonprofit leader, Seila Mosquera-Bruno threw her support behind the proposed jurisdiction expansion in pre-submitted written testimony.

“For too long, affordable housing developed by housing authorities has been isolated inside the arbitrary town boundaries in which those housing authorities were established,” she wrote. ​“This committee has the opportunity to make a common-sense change to partially level the playing field between housing authorities and private developers by allowing housing authorities to build housing in a reasonable area outside their home jurisdictions.”

Open Communities Alliance Outreach Director Taniqua Huguley (pictured) said Thursday that the housing authority jurisdiction bill was actually ​“fairly unremarkable.”

It does not seek to provide any shortcuts or special perks for housing authorities looking to develop new affordable housing. Rather, it simply lets them build outside of an artificially constrained area.

“That people should be able to choose where they live and not have the choice limited by the government is as American as apple pie,” she said.

East Haven State Rep. Joe Zullo said that the assertion that allowing housing authorities to build outside of their current jurisdiction’s wouldn’t strip municipalities of local zoning control was ​“disingenuous.”

That’s because the state’s current affordable housing law — also known as 8 – 30g—allows developers to bypass certain otherwise locally mandated requirements around, for example, on-site parking, if less than 10 percent of the municipality’s overall housing stock is not already ​“affordable.”

This bill will ​“supplant” local zoning board oversight to the effect that developers looking to build affordable housing will be able to do so so long as their projects don’t present a ​“substantial harm” to the community.

That’s true, OCA Executive Director Erin Boggs (pictured) said. But that has little to do with this new housing authority jurisdiction bill. That is instead due to the three decades-old 8 – 30g law.

“Housing authorities would be in the same position that a regular affordable housing developer would be in.” She said she thinks of this new proposed law as offering ​“another opportunity for towns to have excellent developers with long track records of developing really good affordable housing developments” help them meet the state’s 8 – 30g guidelines.

“8 – 30g is already in place,” she reiterated. ​“Any developer can take advantage of that.”