Camillo lauds Lamont on affordable housing
Governor’s comments win support from Greenwich officials
GREENWICH — Throughout the debate over new state zoning reform bills, Greenwich has insisted that a local solution can better handle the need for more affordable housing than a Hartford mandate.
And on Saturday, that argument seemingly got an endorsement from a prominent hometown voice: Gov. Ned Lamont.
Speaking at a plaque dedication at new townhouses in the Armstrong Court affordable housing complex, Lamont, a town resident, gave a thumbs up to Greenwich’s local efforts.
“We don’t need the state government to tell us what to do if we’re doing the right thing and taking the lead on this,” Lamont said in a video taken at the event, after praising First Selectman Fred Camillo and others who
have worked to upgrade the town’s affordable housing stock. “That’s what I really want to salute . ... We’ve got to continue to take the lead or else folks do step in.”
The debate over who determines where affordable housing is built has taken on new urgency with the announcement Monday of close to $50 million in investment in affordable housing projects across the state, including in Stamford. The funding will need the approval of the Bond Commission.
Camillo, Greenwich Communities Board of Commissioners Chairman Sam Romeo, Planning and Zoning Commission Chairwoman Margarita Alban and others have voiced their opposition to several bills aimed at increasing the state’s affordable housing offerings now before the legislature, including Senate Bill 1024 and House Bill 6107.
The bills have been criticized for putting in place new state mandates to create affordable housing that, local officials said, would not work in Greenwich and ignore the town’s existing efforts to create more housing stock.
On Monday, Camillo said Lamont’s remarks show there is no need for anybody to dictate to Greenwich where, he said, there is already a concerted effort to address a lack of affordable housing.
Lamont “was strongly in support of what we’re doing here in Greenwich and in support of local control,” Camillo said. “What we’ve been saying all along is that we’ve been doing things through local initiative, not state mandate. We’re doing pretty well now but we want to do better. As the governor said, you want people who work here to live here.”
Lamont, a past member of the town’s Board of Selectmen and of the Board of Estimate and Taxation, spoke briefly at Saturday’s event.
The work done by Greenwich Communities, he said, “demonstrates that our towns, starting with my town, Greenwich, made a commitment to affordable housing.”
DesegregateCT, an advocacy coalition pushing for the creation of more affordable housing in the state, has endorsed SB 1024, which it says “will enable more diverse types of housing to be developed and will improve zoning processes that have historically restricted housing opportunity, thereby making Connecticut more equitable, inclusively prosperous, and sustainable.”
In response to Lamont’s comments, a spokesman for DesegregateCT said on Monday that, “While the nation built 17 percent more housing units over the last year, Connecticut produced 30 percent fewer units, which means skyrocketing prices and more housing insecurity for many families already battered by the COVID-19 pandemic. We expect Gov. Lamont to make good on his past statements that ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘We must take action to reach the goal of a more equal and just society’ by supporting commonsense zoning reforms this legislative session.”
The Saturday plaque unveiling was designed to honor the people involved in the planning and construction of upgrades at Armstrong Court and completion of Phase 1’s 18 new townhouses.
Last week, Greenwich Communities announced construction would start on the second phase of the project: remodeling existing one- and two-bedroom units at Armstrong Court into three-bedroom apartments with new appliances and other improvements.
In addition to the work on Armstrong Court, Romeo has said there are plans to break ground on another 300 units of affordable housing in town. The town’s Planning and Zoning Commission is also working on establishing a housing trust fund that would allow private money to be used to help developers like Greenwich Communities.
On Monday, state Rep. Kimberly Fiorello, R-149, who attended Saturday’s unveiling, told Hearst Connecticut Media that it “was such a validation to have Gov. Lamont not only recognize, but value and celebrate, the importance of local people being intimately involved in creating affordable housing solutions.”
State Rep. Stephen Meskers, D-150, who also attended, said Lamont has shown he “thinks a carrot is better than a stick . ... The trouble with moving zoning control and incentivizing builders is that you have non-community participants deciding what, how and where to build. That inevitably leads to conflict, whereas empowering the Planning and Zoning and encouraging them to build affordable and workforce housing is a more constructive way to go.”
Max Reiss, Lamont’s director of communications, said Saturday’s remarks were consistent with past statements from the governor about his support for affordable housing in the state: “We believe incentives work when it comes to development.”
During the 24 hours of debate around SB 1024 last month, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said Greenwich, among other communities, have existing zoning regulations in place to keep people of color and people with low incomes from moving there.
Local legislators called on Elicker to apologize, which he said he would not do.