The blight fight in Connecticut’s neighborhoods
During Halloween, the image of the “Haunted House” is at the center of the season. The zombie home is a cultural meme, part of the folklore of witches, goblins and black cats that delights so many this time of year. It may be exciting to safely experience the risk- free simulation of terror, but many if not most of our towns have real- world “Haunted Houses.”
Buildings age, and some are abandoned, or just ignored to the point of neglect. Whole cities can have entire neighborhoods that economically collapse, so people and investment go elsewhere. Cities like New Haven, Hartford and Bridgeport have aggressively sought funding and executed master planning to reverse the neglect and abandonment that results in urban blight.
But our state has more than 170 fairly distinct, even insular towns and cities. It is a tapestry of buildings. That diversity includes many blighted buildings, distressing the communities around them.
The Connecticut General Assembly agrees. In the last 20 years, the state has passed laws that enable all those towns to address blight with local Blight Ordinances that define when buildings become “blighted.” In the last decade, scores of towns, from Brooklyn to Greenwich, have formed definitions of what buildings constitute a “danger to the safety, health or general welfare of the community” — a phrase cut- and- pasted into these new ordinances.
After World War II, zoning laws were instituted to protect property rights and values in the new world of suburbia that sprung up to create perhaps a third of Connecticut’s housing stock in a generation or two. Focusing on new construction, these laws try to regulate the size, function and location of buildings to protect the values of their communities. Blight Ordinances try to regulate existing buildings of any function in any location that have become eyesores. While the visual impact of decaying buildings is easy to spot, one person’s “ugly” might another’s “antique.” A small number of buildings are so historically significant that they are legally protected by Historic Preservation laws, but most are not, no matter how old they are, or what condition they are in.
As a result, a large number of Connecticut towns — from Guilford to Putnam to Waterbury to South Windsor — have crafted Blight Ordinances that cite specific criteria to define unacceptable neglect in the buildings around us. It is easy to define fire damage or hazard, structural collapse, or as Columbia’s ordinance states “dilapidation, decay, or animal infestation.”
But in defining what goes beyond dangerous and into the realm of aesthetics, these codes go beyond life safety. Columbia’s blight ordinance cites “lawn grass 15 inches or greater for at least 15 days” or Windsor’s ” vegetation” “greater than 12 inches in height … for a period of ten days or longer” as requiring regulation. When in public view, automobile tires or batteries are cited as violations of some blight control ordinances. In Brooklyn “debris,” “graffiti” and “vandalism” are cited as criteria to instigate actions to remove what is determined to be visually unacceptable. Putnam’s Director of Economic and Community Development Delpha Very says these regulations reflect the “perception of what a community looks like.”
Last August, after the town of Greenwich defined what constitutes a “nuisance” as codified in their Blight Ordinance, it enabled a long- abandoned home in the Byram section to be torn down. In creating Blight Ordinances that define the responsibilities of ownership in these communities, these towns are coming to terms with their values.
Connecticut’s Fire and Building Codes define health and safety standards and are enforced by each town’s Building and Fire officials. Blight Ordinances go beyond life safety issues to define community standards of aesthetics and face the challenge of defining what is visually desirable. Connecticut does not have “Architectural Review Boards” common in surrounding states that are used to impose community aesthetic standards on new construction. Instead, Connecticut empowers local “Historic Preservation Districts” and “Village Districts” to determine what is visually acceptable in specific locations beyond the sizing and location of buildings that zoning codes define.
“Haunted Houses” and abandoned buildings are undeniably dangerous, but regulating what is stored on your property and the state of your grass and gardens and a building’s exterior surfaces extends local law into the aesthetics. As an architect, I can attest that the law and aesthetics are a dangerous combination, too.
Blight Ordinances are intended to protect property values and can protect neighborhoods from hazardous neglect. But when towns have removed buildings that are inconvenient for development, bad things have happened. The cause of mid- 20th century “Urban Renewal” destroyed neighborhoods and coastal connections.
When aesthetics are defined by property values, the humanity that creates communities is ignored. Historic Districts protect old buildings because they embody the human reality of our history in buildings. Where old buildings are protected by these Historic Districts but stand in the way of a developer or government’s Blight Ordinances, allowing tear- downs to be facilitated by our laws. “Demolition By Neglect” may be replaced with “Demolition By Blight Ordinances” — bad results from the best of intentions.