A ‘well-considered framework’ for affordable housing

Examine. Explore. Encourage. This language characterizes the way in which the “Town of Greenwich Affordable Housing Plan” advances its affordable housing goals, action steps, and strategies. The plan makes clear from the outset that this is a non-binding document. Its adoption does not commit the town to take specific action, nor the state to enforce implementation. Any specific financing and development commitments must come from the town’s governing bodies “after full and transparent public debate.” The plan’s stated intent is “to prompt, encourage and frame that dialogue.”

Consider. Discuss. Investigate. Monday the Greenwich Representative Town Meeting (RTM) votes on this affordable housing plan that has already been approved, without controversy, by the Planning and Zoning Commission and Board of Selectmen.

The plan was created to meet a state requirement that all Connecticut municipalities prepare an affordable housing plan at least once every five years. This state legislation, enacted in 2017, calls for completion of the initial municipal five-year plans by June 1, 2022.

More than half Connecticut’s municipalities, still working on their plans, have missed this deadline. The Greenwich plan, if approved Monday, will make it to the state’s Office of Policy and Management (OPM) before the end of June.

When the Board of Selectmen approved the plan last month, Selectwoman Janet Stone-McGuigan called it “excellent work,” as quoted in an article by Greenwich Time reporter Ken Borsuk.

The authors of the plan — members of the Planning and Zoning Commission’s committee for drafting an affordable housing plan — have indeed been diligent in their work and have produced an informative document that lays firm substantive groundwork for further dialogue and possible future amendments to the plan.

Although the plan might have been more progressive in its vision and bolder in its action orientation, that approach would likely have doomed it to immediate death at the hands of the selectmen and the RTM. Progressive vision and bold action are not the Greenwich way, especially when it comes to affordable housing.

Rather, the plan’s tone conforms to the various versions of the slogans we see on signs around town, particularly in the Fourth Ward:

Yes to Affordable Housing; No to Overdevelopment.

The expectation might be that this non-binding, non-controversial, informative document with its tentative suggestions should have smooth sailing through the RTM. After all, in advocating for an increased level of affordable housing, it seeks to change as little as possible.

Many of the ideas it puts forward have been part of local and statewide affordable housing discourse going back to the 1980s. As the plan points out, it is a continuation and expansion of the affordable housing goals specified in the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development that the RTM approved in 2019.

Smooth sailing?

That seems to have been too much to expect. During this past week’s RTM committee and district meetings, one of three motions the Budget Overview Committee (BOC) will put forward is to defer approval until September to allow more careful review, ignoring the drafting committee’s considerable outreach and incorporation of valuable community feedback.

Haven’t we already deferred addressing critical housing needs for long enough?

Another BOC motion wants the plan to declare that the state’s 1989 affordable housing appeals legislation (8-30g) and 2021 accessory dwelling unit legislation will have an adverse local budgetary impact because the potential increase in population will strain current infrastructure and school capacity.

In other words, our affordable housing plan should signal that Greenwich can’t afford any increase in population, while singling out very specific potential sources of population growth.

This exclusionary amendment does not belong in our affordable housing plan.

Peter Berg, RTM Land Use Committee chair and member of the affordable housing drafting committee, criticized this exclusionary approach in one of our recent email exchanges.

“In the 32 years since 8-30g was adopted, Greenwich has approved scores of subdivisions resulting in the construction of hundreds of new single-family homes,” he wrote, “Where was the objection to the impacts on our infrastructure, schools, water, sewers, roads?”

The RTM should approve the plan, and without such damaging amendments. The plan provides a well-considered framework for moving forward to the actual work of providing the housing our community needs, maybe even someday through bold action driven by a progressive vision.