Department of Housing a big part of Malloy legacy

HARTFORD — For 30 years in Connecticut, housing was one item on a long menu overseen by the Department of Economic and Community Development.

Then, in 2013, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy created the state Department of Housing.

The move signaled the Stamford Democrat’s belief that giving more people access to affordable housing helps individuals, communities and the economy. He then empowered his new department with investment.

Under Malloy, the state invested over $1.5 billion in affordable housing. That investment renovated or created 25,000 housing units, with 22,000 affordable units, across the state, according to DOH. That’s about $60,000 per unit of housing, a high cost because of the extensive site remediation often needed, said Dan Arsenault, DOH legislative program manager.

“Connecticut had withdrawn from playing an active role in housing,” said Malloy in an interview Thursday. “The number of dollars going into housing had shrank — not just based on inflation, the actual dollars going to housing had almost disappeared. So if we were going to change the trajectory of affordable housing in Connecticut, we needed a housing department.”

Subsequently, Connecticut became the first state to end chronic veteran homelessness and the only state to match all chronically homeless people with housing, DOH said.

“Gov. Malloy has put more funding into affordable housing and solving the homelessness crisis than any governor previously,” said Adam Bovilsky, who leads the Norwalk Housing Authority. “He is widely lauded by affordable housing and ending homelessness advocates.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle said they applauded much of his efforts, too — although suburban legislators often clashed with his administration over housing policy.

The issue is urgent because Connecticut remains the 9th most expensive state to rent a two-bedroom apartment. Housing policy and overall housing value have a complicated relationship, but the Stamford-Norwalk area was the fifth most expensive metropolitan area to rent a two-bedroom in the nation in 2018.

Even with state subsidies and investment, in fiscal year 2017 only 31 out of 169 towns met the state guideline of having affordable housing comprise 10 percent of their housing stock. This greatly impacts who can afford to live where.

“Connecticut is one the most segregated states in the nation,” said Evonne Klein, DOH commissioner.

Malloy acknowledged the state has much farther to go.

“Have I corrected the ills of the last 300 years? The answer is no,” said Malloy. “Have I made those matters worse? The answer is no.”

Ending homelessness

When the DOH first set a goal of ending chronic veterans

homelessness, it seemed impossible.

But in 2014, DOH changed how it approached all kinds of homelessness by creating a coordinated access network that connects people to numerous state resources, including housing, mental health and other services, by dialing three numbers, 211.

211 can tell the homeless exactly which shelters have openings so they do not have to search town by town, said Natalie Coard, executive director of the Stamford housing authority, Charter Oak Communities. 211 case managers can also help get apartments operated by housing authorities.

“They’re almost holding their hand through the process,” said Coard. “We were not able to do that.”

Similarly, two years ago, Connecticut set a goal to match all people who have been homeless for a year or longer with housing. The state met that goal in 2017, the Governor’s office said, and now is maintaining it. In the past three months, the state has found shelter for 280 homeless families, Malloy announced Tuesday.

“The real transformative piece here was,” Klein paused and sighed, “that was feeling of how can you end homelessness? Is this something we are realistically going to be able to do?”

“And then charting our progress and looking back at all the work back that has been done and saying to ourselves ‘You know, we actually did this,’” Klein said with an almost incredulous laugh.

The state is now pursuing another objective: ending youth and family homelessness by 2020, Klein said.

Affordable housing

Affordable housing options can be key to preventing homelessness. Affordable housing can be provided in many ways such as subsidized private development, government-funded housing and state or federally-funded housing vouchers.

The state’s $1.5 billion spending — mostly in the form of deferred low interest loans to private developers — was matched by $2.5 billion in private sector investment, DOH said. Multiple sources called this level of investment “unprecedented.”

Malloy said his investments “absolutely” produced

the economic development he expected.

“Most directly, the construction process employs a lot of people,” said Malloy. “On a long-term basis, we know that when we have developed or redeveloped good affordable housing it has had positive ramifications in school systems, in public safety, in the distribution of job opportunities, and making sure people are available to do the work that needs to be done in the state of Connecticut.”

Carol Martin, executive director of the Westport and Fairfield Housing authorities, praised the housing created by the state, but also said more affordable housing needs to be created around transportation hubs.

State Rep. Republican state Rep. Brenda Kupchick of Fairfield objected to the timing of these investments — coinciding with Connecticut’s growing unfunded liabilities.

“I think it is a noble thing to do but I also think you need to pay your bills,” she said. “When you owe money to your pensions, to people who you made a promise to, and you’re not paying it… that’s a problem.”

Funding for the DOH increased almost every year from fiscal year 2015 to 2019 to a high of almost $1 billion in the current fiscal year, even as the roughly $20 billion state budget shrunk by 4 percent during Malloy’s tenure. The agency also won more than $150 million in federal funds this year and each of the past three.

Still, some DOH programs were cut over time, like DOH’s Eviction and Foreclosure Prevention Program, which paid back rent for low-income people, which was terminated in 2016, said Arsenault. A similar program, the Security Deposit Guarantee Program, was cut.

“That was a big loss,” said Nilda Havrilla, who runs Connecticut Legal Services’ Housing division.

Lawmakers intervene

Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford, often found himself at odds with suburban and rural lawmakers over affordable housing issues.

Kupchick, an eight-year member of the Housing Committee, said suburban voices were “actively shamed” by Malloy’s administration on housing issues.

“He has led by the bully pulpit,” said Republican state Rep. Tony Hwang of Fairfield, co-chair of the legislature’s Housing Committee. “I just believe if the governor and his commissioner worked better with the entire legislative body, and not just the people that agree with him, we could have done much more.”

Malloy defended his administration, challenging the reporter to “Name a state representative that I refused to meet with in eight years.”

“If their suggestion was to leave things the way they were, well yes, I didn’t listen to that,” he later added.

In 2017, lawmakers overrode Malloy’s veto in order to pass a bill that would make it easier for towns to get moratoriums that private developers from overriding local zoning laws to build affordable housing. In towns that do not have 10 percent affordable housing, a state law called 8-30G permits developers to ignore local zoning, if they are constructing at least some affordable housing.

“That was one of the great accomplishments of 2017 when it was the only bill that overrode the governor’s veto,” Hwang said.

Malloy said, “We had good laws that have been made weaker by the legislature.”

Then, in 2018, lawmakers failed to pass another priority, a bill that would stop towns from using their zoning laws to block multifamily housing.

These bills lead Democratic state Rep. Roland Lemar of New Haven, cochair of two committees that work on housing, to call Malloy’s legacy a “mixed success.”

“Where we saw challenges was this constant pushback on 8-30G and the role that zoning has historically played in segregating our communities,” said Lemar.

Hwang, who spent two years in federal public housing after immigrating to the U.S. as a child, said he supports building more affordable housing, but he doesn’t want to use “the stick” to force towns into it. Hwang and Kupchick both wanted to see more support for towns building senior housing, instead of family units.