The ‘missing middle’ key to state housing

Even as home confinement continues and daily life remains on hold, the underlying machinery of our existence continues uninterrupted. Bills come due, and rents must be paid. Though there have been some temporary reprieves as the depths of our economic troubles come into focus, the basic issues remain. America is in the midst of a multidimensional housing crisis.

The problem can be summed up by saying there isn’t enough of the kind of housing that people want in the places they want it. This is most glaring near the heart of major job centers — New York, Boston, San Francisco — but it applies farther out, too, including in Connecticut, one of the few states in the nation to see its population decline in recent years.

That raises what seems like a paradox: How can a state have a housing crisis and a shrinking population at the same time?

The Partnership for Strong Communities, a Hartford-based nonprofit with a focus on affordable housing and fighting homelessness, provides some answers. Connecticut isn’t building many homes in general, ranking 49th nationally in its rate of issuing new permits. And what it does build is not meeting the needs of people it is trying to attract.

Connecticut’s housing crisis can be divided into two parts. The dividing line, as in much of the state, boils down roughly to its southwestern corner and everyone else.

The entire state shares with the rest of the nation the rampant inequality that makes it hard for people to afford their rent and mortgage. People are forced to spend more each year on housing even as income stagnates, and that was before a massive global economic disruption from the coronavirus. That’s the first housing crisis.

The second crisis is specific to places in high demand, and most acute in places like New York City. Fairfield County, with its plentiful jobs and easy access to many more, fits into this category; New Haven is also taking on that profile. Connecticut’s particular ways serve to exacerbate the problem.

“Our overall resistance to any kind of growth is hampering the state’s ability to adapt to changes,” said Sean Ghio, Partnership for Strong Communities policy director. The state’s lack of population growth, he said, is partially an effect of our failure to build the kind of housing people want.

That often means apartments, and if you’ve been following news from the suburbs in the past decade you know that the word “apartment” is often akin to an obscenity. According to plenty of longtime residents, almost all of whom live in single-family homes on large lots, apartments are equivalent to low-income housing, and serve only to drive down property values, destroy quality of life and, though most opponents are careful to phrase it more delicately, introduce the “wrong element” into town.

In truth, apartments are homes like any other, and some people prefer them. Towns should build the kind of homes people want to live in, and affordability is only part of the equation. There are major economic drivers behind the push for more housing, and not just in the cities.

“We have some of the oldest housing stock in the country,” Ghio said. “If you’re trying to attract companies from another part of the country, and the people who will work there are going to have to live in an 80-year-old house that will cost them $600,000, that’s a huge competitive disadvantage for the company.”

The restrictions we put on our housing supply inflates the value of existing homes, which makes the problem more severe.

The answer doesn’t have to come from large buildings. In developmentaverse towns, relatively minor changes can make a big difference by allowing for more of what’s called the “missing middle” in housing between singlefamily homes and large apartment buildings. That can mean more duplexes and triplexes, greater use of accessory dwelling units, which are homes within a home, as well as an increase in mixed-use development, which can be as simple as an apartment on the second level over a store. None of that has to change the character of a town, and can often go unnoticed.

“There are ways to make state more affordable, and a lot more healthy, without fundamentally changing the state,” Ghio said.

As we think about a post-coronavirus future, we would be wise to build the kind of state people are asking to live in.