Thomas Breen photo
LCI Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo and City Plan Director Aicha Woods.
Allan Appel Photo
Grand Avenue as it points towards downtown.
City officials promised to examine the potential impact that a rezoning project might have on low-income black and brown communities as they move forward with longstanding retail revitalization plans for Dixwell, Whalley, and Grand Avenues.
Livable City Initiative (LCI) Executive Director Serena Neal-Sanjurjo and City Plan Director Aïcha Woods made that commitment during the latest public meeting about the New Haven Commercial Corridors project, held at the New Haven Opportunity Center at 316 Dixwell Ave.
Woods and fellow city planners in her department presented to around three dozen people about the city’s planned zoning updates to the three main downtown-adjacent avenues as they approach the city center.
Thomas Breen photo
The community conversation at the New Haven Opportunity Center.
The project, which Neal-Sanjurjo said has been in the works for four years and which Woods has been leading public workshops on for over a year, seeks to use zoning law changes to shift Dixwell, Whalley, and Grand from their current focus on cars, parking, and open lots to a dense, walkable streetscape with mixed-use developments. The project would create a new zoning district called a Commercial Gateway District and would apply to Grand Avenue from Olive Street to Hamilton Street, Whalley Avenue from Howe Street to Pendleton Street, and Dixwell Avenue from Tower Parkway to Munson Street.
As at a recent City Plan Commission workshop and at a public meeting at the downtown library, the community conversation this past Wednesday night quickly pivoted towards the affordability mandates included in the proposed new zoning regs.
In addition to encouraging density by changing parking minimums to parking maximums and increasing the baseline Floor Area Ratio (FAR) for new projects, Woods said, the Commercial Gateway District rules are designed to “guide affordable and mid-market rentals into these neighborhoods” through a combination of mandates and incentives.
LCI Neighborhood & Commercial Development Arlevia Samuel.
According to the new draft regulations, which can be read in full here, any new residential developments containing nine or more units must set aside at least 10 percent of those units as affordable. Developers will be allowed to build more and smaller units in any given project if they agree to set aside larger percentages at affordable rates.
Per the proposed regs, developers that set aside at least 20 percent of units as affordable can have an average minimum residential unit size of 825 square feet. Developers who set aside at least 30 percent of units at affordable rates can have an average unit size of 750 square feet. And developers who set aside at least 40 percent of units at affordable rates can have an average unit size of 575 square feet.
What is the definition of “affordable” in this context? asked Jan Simmons.
After reviewing the research and recommendations of the Affordable Housing Task Force, LCI Neighborhood & Commercial Development Manager Arlevia Samuel said, LCI has recommended that “affordable” mean families earning 60 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI) will have to pay 30 percent or less of their annual income on rent.
And what is 60 percent AMI in actual dollars? Simmons asked.
Around $58,000 for a family of four.
“That’s not realistic,” Simmons said. “That’s baloney.”
Neal-Sanjurjo said that the 10 percent affordable mandate and the density incentives included in the proposed zoning regs are simply a way for LCI to get to the table before discussions of a project even begins. Right now, LCI often has to play catch up because there are no affordability requirements on the city books, making it particularly difficult to convince developers who are not working with any federal housing subsidies to set aside a particular number of units at deeply affordable rates. “It’s a way of getting to the table before as opposed to fighting from the other side.”
Anstress Farwell and Nadine Horton.
How long will these units remain affordable? New Haven Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell asked.
Right now, Neal-Sanjurjo said, LCI tries to follow the city housing authority’s guidelines for publicly subsidized, privately owned developments. Usually, the housing authority requires units to remain affordable for 39 years. However, Neal-Sanjurjo said, LCI has made some deals with developers for 20-year affordability commitments, and some deals with 99-year affordability commitments. The proposed CGD regs currently do not include a specific provision detailing how long said units must remain at 60 percent AMI.
Kerry Ellington and Caitlin Maloney.
“I am deeply concerned about low-income, black and brown communities being displaced from these neighborhoods,” legal aid community organizer Kerry Ellington said.
Has the City Plan Department or LCI conducted any studies specifically looking at the racial impact of these proposed zoning changes? If not, can the project be put on hold until that work is done? A lot of low-income people she knows have had to move out of New Haven to Waterbury or Ansonia simply to find a place they can afford to rent, Ellington said. And, almost always, those people are black or brown.
We don’t want a whole bunch of 201 Munsons, Ellington said, referring to a nearly 400-unit apartment complex planned for the border of Dixwell and Newhallville where the owners so far have not committed to setting aside any units at affordable rents.
While LCI, City Plan, and the Economic Development department have conducted many fiscal impact, feasibility of growth, and economic growth studies for this Commercial Corridors project over the past four years, Neal-Sanjurjo said, no study has looked specifically at color. “I think that’s something that we should do,” Neal-Sanjurjo said. She promised to figure out some way to do that kind of analysis with slowing down the project.
Neal-Sanjurjo did not commit to commissioning a new racial impact study specifically for this project. She did say that LCI and other city departments will make sure to review all of the data that they currently have on these neighborhoods slated for rezoning with an eye towards how the project would impact low-income, black and brown populations in particular.
She cautioned the city should not lose sight of the original motivations for this rezoning project four years ago. City officials spoke to people in Whalley, Dixwell, and along Grand Avenue, she said, and heard time and time again that they wanted revitalized commercial, retail districts along these main neighborhood thoroughfares.
Having been born and raised in Dixwell’s Florence Virtue homes, Neal-Sanjurjo said, she herself remembers when Dixwell Avenue was a one-stop shop for everything one needed in the community: groceries, doctor’s office, dentist’s office. The dearth of retail along those corridors now, she said, is simply “unacceptable.”
“We really want to move this process thoughtfully, with all the community input we can get,” while requiring another 2,000-plus units to be built in this city with some kind of legal affordability mandate.
“At the end of the day, we’re all looking for better commercial corridors,” she said. Places like Grand Avenue can be a bustling marketplace with affordable places to live. “It just needs very small changes” to the zoning code to help make that vision a reality.
The next steps for this project, Woods said, include submitting the proposals to the Board of Alders, which will then result in a committee public hearing and a City Plan Commission public hearing, before having a final vote and potential adoption by the board.