Change would make housing statutes fairer
After I left the Army and finished college, my wife and I were ready to start a family. We loved Fairfield, but the high cost of housing prevented us from affording a single-family home here at a time. We decided to move into a four-family home — which was a rare find in Fairfield — to get our foot in the door. We joined a group of five or six four-families on a cul de sac in a quiet little neighborhood in the beach area. Most of the families were young like ours – with a fair amount of recent immigrants. The three buildings on our side of the street all shared our yards, and our kids would play back there together. It was a beautiful neighborhood, and we loved it.
Our idyllic start in Fairfield is nearly impossible for many families today — in large part because of Fairfield’s outdated constraints on new housing. A bill before the state Legislature, SB1024, would modestly change that for the better.
Despite what you may have heard, SB1024 would not radically change Fairfield. For example, the bill would enable a small increase in the amount of housing that could be built around a single train station of the town’s choice. According to the Connecticut Zoning Atlas, Fairfield has already started to allow four-family housing as of right. (“As of right” means that the housing can receive staff approval as long as the application meets the regulations the town has adopted after public input and hearings.) The bill would also concentrate twoto four-family housing around a “main street,” probably the Post Road for Fairfield. Our town is off to a good start there too, with 7.1 percent of land in Fairfield already zoned for twofamily housing, as of right.
SB1024 would also legalize accessory dwelling units for single-family property owners, which would embed a single small unit on a third floor or in a garage. Fairfield’s existing regulations have satisfied virtually all of the provisions of the bill — in 85.5 percent of the town’s zoned area. So what’s the big deal? Unfortunately, we have seen some distort the discourse by claiming that the bill would radically transform the “character” of Fairfield. When developers started buying up all of the small cape houses down our street to put up giant McMansions that took up the whole lot, no one made a peep. These new additions did in fact destroy the character of the neighborhood, but none of the elected officials making noise about SB1024 had anything to say about it then.
After getting our start in our four-family house, we were able to save up to buy a home in Fairfield. We share this path with many who lived in other units of our first family home. More people ought to have the same opportunity that we had, and SB1024 is an effective way of making that happen. It is a win for every community in our state. Young families will have new housing options. The elderly will be able to remain in communities where they have resided for their entire lives instead of being pushed out after retirement. We will create new paths to home ownership with SB1024 — just like living in our fourunit housing did for us. Fairfield residents should know better than to succumb to the hysteria surrounding zoning reform. We gain a lot by being open-minded — and by keeping an open door, too.