Conn. housing numbers don’t add up

For housing advocates, it’s distressing (if not surprising) that 11 municipalities have less than 1 percent affordable housing. Too many towns insist on playing defense instead of offense.

It's useful to have a scorecard of affordable housing in Connecticut.

Housing, after all, has become something of a competitive sport in our state. What it will never be is a game.

Figuring out the winners and losers is a matter of personal perspective. For housing advocates, it's distressing (if not surprising) that 11 municipalities have less than 1 percent affordable housing. Too many towns insist on playing defense instead of offense.

Tracking Connecticut by the numbers also tells us that 29 towns and cities are above the 10 percent threshold of affordable housing set by the state. That allows those communities to be exempt from a law that lets developers challenge local rejections of plans to build more affordable housing.

Those towns below 1 percent don't tell the real story. Anyone who has spent time in the likes of rural Bridgewater (0.1 percent) knows the commercial district is limited to a lone eatery. For Warren, the sole town with 0.0 percent, Greenwich might as well be Manhattan.

The more accurate picture comes from consideration of the towns with populations of more than 20,000. The shoreline New Haven County town of Guilford has the least affordable housing (2.3 percent), while others are clustered in Fairfield County towns of New Canaan (2.6 percent), Newtown (2.7 percent), Fairfield (2.9 percent) and Ridgefield (3 percent).

Anyone who has spent time driving around Connecticut knows there can be whiplash shifts in character within a few blocks. No one is expecting a five-story apartment building to pop up in Bethany (0.5 percent), Redding (0.4 percent), Sherman (0.3 percent), Goshen (0.3 percent) or Weston (0.2 percent), but the real resistance is coming from the likes of New Canaan, which has a busy commercial downtown. The same is true of Ridgefield and Fairfield, which also has Metro-North access and college campuses within its borders.

The numbers on the scorecard may not surprise any lawmakers, but it should remind them that boosting affordable housing in Connecticut needs to become a mission. The areas that have seen increases aren't really success stories. The Office of Legislative Research Report found that available affordable housing in Hartford rose from 35.6 percent in 2011 to 40.9 percent last year. New Haven saw it rise from 29 percent to 33.4 percent. It just underscores the need that's out there, but people in need should be able to explore options beyond the state's cities.

And despite all the attention paid to the issue in recent years, there were significant decreases in affordable housing in a few towns.

Just consider the plight of longtime residents in those smaller communities who can't afford to remain in their homes but would like to stay near the area they lived in for decades. Every dotted line should not lead directly to cities.

It's just a scorecard, but it's one every lawmaker should keep handy. But they need to take the highlight marker to the section revealing that 93 of Connecticut's 169 towns don't cross the 5 percent mark on affordable housing.

That the score isn't really changing is enough to tell us Connecticut needs a new game plan.