Affordable Housing Still Scarce

In Connecticut

HARTFORD (AP) — Establishing affordable housing in Connecticut has largely failed in the past decade, falling victim to a refinancing boom and the desire to preserve the rural character of municipalities, according to an analysis of Census data and observations by those involved in efforts to build more housing.

The General Assembly in 1989 enacted an affordable housing appeals law intended to bring more such housing to affluent towns. Fifteen years later, an analysis based on state housing and federal census data suggests the law has failed to make significant progress, The Hartford Courant reported on Sunday.

For example, the poorest quarter of Connecticut cities and towns had about three-quarters of the state’s subsidized housing ten years ago. The richest one-fourth had about five percent, according to data collected by the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

In 2003, those proportions were virtually unchanged.

Efforts to bring affordable housing out of the pockets of poverty and into wealthier areas of Connecticut also have failed. Between 1993 and 2003, the 20 Connecticut towns with the lowest poverty rates added 164 affordable homes. The 20 cities and towns with the highest poverty rates collectively added 7,365 affordable homes in that same period.

A few affluent towns have added significant numbers of subsidized homes. But more than one-third of the 118 towns where household income was higher than the state median had fewer affordable homes in 2003 than ten years earlier.

In some cases, the reasons for the decline in subsidized housing totals are the result of refinancing of government-subsidized mortgages to take advantage of lower interest rates. The properties were no longer counted as subsidized housing.

Another reason is that affluent communities have not built much affordable housing due to fear, prejudice, and a desire to not change the rural character of towns, said Michael Regan, an official at the state community development agency.

More than 200,000 low- and moderate-income households in Connecticut are “severely burdened” by housing costs, defined as 50 percent or more of income spent for housing, according to estimates by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which relied on 2000 Census data.

The 1989 affordable housing law intended to establish neighborhoods and communities with a mix of working-class, middle-class, and wealthy people, rather than enclaves of rich and poor, white and minority.

Critics say the law tramples on local control, emphasizes punishment over encouragement, and allows developers to decide where housing should be built with no direction from local zoning officials.

“The law has been made a bit better with reforms that have been enacted over the past several sessions,” said state Representative T.R. Rowe, R-Trumbull. “But the underlying law remains that local control of zoning is not always going to remain local as long as this so-called affordable housing appeals act is still out there.”

One reason the law has not opened rich towns to more moderate-priced housing is that the legislature’s changes made it tougher for developers to use it, said Terry J. Tondro, a University of Connecticut law professor who was co-chairman of the legislative commission that proposed the law. The legislature inflamed opposition by changing the law’s emphasis from housing for the working class to housing for low-income people, he said.