Commentary–

Exploiting Connecticut’s Affordable Housing Statute

By Jennifer Freed

Connecticut’s Affordable Housing land use statute, Chapter 126a, Section 8-30g, as written, has a significant negative impact upon local municipalities. This area is ripe for profits and development due to its desirability and density, and is at special risk for exploitation under this law by developers who seek to maximize their profits under the guise of providing affordable housing. There are right ways to provide affordable housing, and wrong ways. The wrong way is how the law is set up now; it allows developers to push through inappropriate developments that strain the state’s limited natural resources and local coffers while lining their own pockets.

There are currently two pending housing developments in Sherman and Newtown that have been rejected by local zoning in earlier (and incidentally less dense and “nonaffordable”) forms that have now resurfaced under the “affordable housing” regulations, and seek to completely circumvent zoning laws. Rather than maintain a pattern of densities and uses arranged according to the existing plans of conservation and development, under this current statute Section 8-30g, housing developments with affordable units included are not required to be located where local planning and zoning requires. The law seeks to prevent towns from practicing exclusionary zoning — a noble and just cause. However, both of these developments were rejected in prior, less dense forms, on their own merits and without affordable housing components involved. Only after their original proposals (containing only market rate components) were rejected did the developers pull out the big guns and arm themselves with plans for housing in a more dense form, but now with an “affordable” component, to attempt to ensure that the towns approve their applications under the cover of State Statute Chapter 126a, Section 8-30g.

Unfortunately, the appellate courts in Connecticut have historically decided in the developer’s favor when towns have rejected “affordable developments” even when valid reasons for rejection exist.

The opposition of these types of proposals strains the resources of both local taxpayers and local conservation groups. Only a law change as requested here will ensure that the monumental task of protecting Connecticut’s natural resources is upheld at the state level, rather than falling to local citizen’s groups and limited town resources.

In Sherman, a “spite proposal,” made up of 36 condos with 30 percent affordable, on a steep and environmentally fragile watershed location of a rural four-acre zoned farm area, is currently on the books. The prior proposal for 18 single-family houses without affordable component had been rejected by the town planning and zoning (the developer is appealing that decision in court) for various reasons.

Right here in Newtown, 26 condos with 30 percent affordable on 4.5 acres are proposed, in R-2 zone in the reviving area of historic Sandy Hook center. The three prior proposals by this developer for 12 units, 16 units, and 23 units on the same parcel were rejected by town zoning (the developer is currently appealing the last decision on 23 units in court). Unlike in Sherman, since there were significant issues related to public health and safety on the prior applications (the only two reasons that the affordable housing law concedes to the town) the Town of Newtown has good reason to think that with persistence, this particular development may be stopped. However, Church Hill Road is one of the busiest roads in Newtown. A small residential street threatened under a future proposal would have a hard time proving health and safety issues exist.

If these two developments in question are pushed through these towns, using the state’s statute, a tsunami of slash and burn development will occur. By precedent, any two-acre zoned neighborhood in Newtown could be next. Sherman, which currently does not allow condos, would be inundated by developers seeking to maximize their own profits and circumvent the four-acre zoning law. A developer could simply buy two contiguous homes and raze them.... think of how lucrative 26 condos would be versus only two houses.

I challenge local residents to write or email their state representatives, calling upon them to pull together the best resources in land use matters to revise state statute Chapter 126a, Section 8-30g. The current law is well intentioned, yet is harmful to public interest. Only a state-level legal change will ensure that this lovely area of Connecticut is not destroyed through systematic private developer manipulation and undercutting of a half-century of local planning and zoning work aimed at protecting taxpayers, citizens, and the state’s natural resources.

(Jennifer Freed is a Sandy Hook property owner and a founding member of Conserve Sherman, a nonprofit organization dedicated to responsible growth and the preservation of Sherman’s rural character. She is also a member of Sandy Hook’s Streetscape Committee.)