Stuck in affordable housing déjà vu
The flashback took me back decades. It was déjà vu.
I was attending the Jan. 28 Zoom program sponsored by the Greenwich United Way Planning Council, a panel discussion on the need for greater housing diversity in Greenwich. Panelists were Sean Ghio, policy director of Partnership for Strong Communities (PSC), a Hartford-based organization seeking to create affordable housing opportunities and end homelessness in Connecticut; Katie DeLuca, Greenwich Director of Planning and Zoning; and Margarita Alban, chair of the Greenwich Planning and Zoning Commission.
“We aren’t meeting the need in our community,” said Alban, noting the number of cost burdened households in Greenwich (households for which housing costs are more than 30 percent of income) and that 60 percent of town and school employees don’t live in Greenwich.
According to Ghio, half of Greenwich renter households (renters make up a third of Greenwich households) pay more than 30 percent of income for housing; a quarter pay more than half their income.
The CT Zoning Atlas, an interactive map recently launched by DesegregateCT, contains detailed zoning, income, and racial information (BIPOC, or percentage identifying as Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color) for all Connecticut municipalities. According to this map, 33.6 percent of Greenwich households are cost burdened, and 27 percent are BIPOC.
Among the affordable housing initiatives that the Commission’s housing task force is considering, cited by Alban, are a housing trust fund and inclusionary zoning.
Housing Trust Fund? Inclusionary zoning?
That’s when the flashback kicked in. Immediately following the meeting, I began rummaging through the remains of my files (mostly thrown away) that contain housing documents from the late 1970s, 1980s, and into the 1990s, back in the days when I devoted much of my energy to affordable housing advocacy. I found what I was looking for: “The Preliminary Report of the Selectmen’s Committee on A Housing Trust Fund For The Town Of Greenwich,” dated February 1987.
The report, representing many hours of volunteer work by a seven-member committee chaired by former town attorney, now Judge A. William Mottolese, is comprehensive and well researched, with sound, detailed recommendations for a housing trust fund. The committee that included former First Selectman Ruth Sims and former Greenwich Housing Authority chair Bruce Gordon, both now deceased, was appointed by First Selectman John Margenot. It met 22 times following its formation in August 1986.
An excerpt from the executive summary:
“The evidence gathered supports the finding of the United Way’s ‘Needs Assessment’ of May, 1986, that below-market-rate (BMR) housing is the single, most critical need in Greenwich to maintain the Town’s heterogeneous character and economic vitality.
“Furthermore, a strong community consensus seems to exist that progress toward solving the affordable housing problem requires public/private cooperation and the support of diverse local interest groups.
“The Selectmen’s Housing Trust Fund Committee has taken note of the Town’s 1984 Plan of Development which has been approved by the Representative Town Meeting (RTM). The Plan of Development states one of its seven basic objectives is ‘to maintain a balanced population by providing for a variety of residential types and densities.’
“The Committee believes an opportunity exists under State enabling legislation to initiate a valuable partnership among the Town, the State, financial institutions, realtors, developers, private organizations and the general public. The Committee believes formation of a Housing Trust Fund would take advantage of that opportunity and the Committee recommends that a Housing Trust Fund be created.”
Reading the report, I was caught up in the perpetual affordable housing déjà vu, the vortex in which Greenwich affordable housing initiatives are trapped, countless volunteer hours devoted to solutions that eventually die, over and over again across time.
The town rejected the housing trust fund recommendation, as it did an inclusionary zoning recommendation that evolved from the 2009 Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD). A housing task force recommended a community development partnership (CDP) with inclusionary zoning a key component. A six-member committee, chaired by Mary Ellen LeBien, took up the CDP recommendation. Eight years and untold hours of volunteer time after the original POCD recommendations the result was a zoning regulation amendment, but nothing that resembled inclusionary zoning.
This time around we might escape the déjà vu vortex, but let’s not hold our breath.