Lamont: Connecticut rental listings should include the cost of utilities
With New York City apartment hunters able to compare energy costs like car shoppers gauging fuel efficiency between makes and models, Gov. Ned Lamont wants Connecticut to follow suit — starting in a handful of cities with neighborhoods where tenants struggle the most to pay the monthly utilities.
Under the Lamont administration’s proposal, by 2026, many landlords statewide would have to post an energy “label” for the apartments or houses they market to prospective tenants. Municipalities would be able to fine landlords $500 for any initial failure to include a label in a rental listing, and $1,000 for each additional offense.
Lamont wants to see the rule go into effect in July 2023 in municipalities where energy costs represent at least 10 percent of the median income in one or more designated census tracts.
Based on U.S. Department of Energy estimates of residential energy costs, Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford and Waterbury would be in the initial group of cities where the new requirement would go into effect next year, if the bill is enacted in its current form.
“In this very inflationary environment where every dollar counts, we’re doing everything we can to ensure that our shoppers can all be smart shoppers,” Lamont said Monday, speaking at the Shippan Place Apartments overlooking Cummings Park in Stamford, which received the Energy Star designation in 2019. “Too often if you are a renter, you don’t know what the cost of electricity is, the cost of heating.”
The Connecticut General Assembly’s Housing Committee voted in favor of the bill after a March 1 hearing, and a vote by the full legislature has not yet been scheduled.
Cities and towns with neighborhoods where energy utilities are at least 4 percent would come under the new rules in July 2024, and all remaining properties 12 months after that if they qualify. There would be exemptions for buildings constructed since 2000; those where utilities are included in the rental rate; and those in which the building owner lives.
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection would rely on the federal Low-income Energy Affordability Data tool to determine energy “burden” thresholds for each municipality. Statewide on average, Connecticut residents pay 3 percent of income to cover electricity and heat, according to the LEAD tool.
“This is a bill that would essentially establish a miles-per-gallon label for your home,” said Katie
Dykes, commissioner of DEEP. “We are on a fossilfuel roller coaster when you think about rising prices for heating oil, for natural gas, other fuels that we have historically relied on.”
In a 2017 study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York City buildings subject to similar rules saw a 14 percent reduction in “energy use intensity” over four years compared with a control group.
“It takes a certain amount of time for the energy savings associated with disclosure policies to take effect,” the MIT researchers stated in the study. “Market actors need some time to understand newly disclosed building energy use information and to incorporate this into their decision-making processes.
LEAD lists a Bridgeport neighborhood wedged between Cedar Creek and
Interstate 95 as having the highest energy costs in the state, at 15 percent of the median income in the district. Commercial enterprises dominate the pocket, including the Wheelabrator Bridgeport power plant and a fuel tank farm facing Cedar Creek.
A Meriden property owner testified this month during the Housing Committee hearing that the
rules could represent a challenge for landlords who have only a few properties in their portfolio, and limited resources to spend on energy-efficient upgrades.
“If I can’t afford it, I can’t do it,” landlord Tyler Turel said. “A 150-year-old house can’t compete with something that’s modern.”