Town has history of opposing affordable housing

NEW FAIRFIELD — As the town considers rezoning land for affordable elderly housing, zoning commissioners are bracing for some pushback — and it wouldn’t be the first time.

Zoning Commission Chair John Moran said earlier this month that he expects opposition, due in part to some misconceptions and a negative connotation association with the team “affordable housing,” from residents concerned about people from other areas — particularly cities — moving into town.

Although he doesn’t think affordable elderly housing will bring an influx of former citydwellers to town, Moran said the pushback is “always a concern.”

New Fairfield is no stranger to affordable housing opposition.

Forty-seven years ago, a proposed mixed-income and mixedraced housing development known as Waters Edge caused a bit of controversy in town.

In 1973, a man named Stephen Weil sought to build a community of townhouses and condos on 253 acres of land he owned, situated on a Candlewood Lake peninsula on the New Fairfield-Sherman border.

The goal was to create a “planned development,” open to and integrative of both low- and median-income families, according to a 1973 Bridgeport Post article by Reginald Johnson.

Weil teamed up with the New York-based nonprofit Suburban Action Institute and its affiliate, Garden Cities Development Corporation, to pursue the $50 million project.

According to the article, the developers claimed Waters Edge would not only provide “good housing for people of all backgrounds and races at reasonable to low costs,” but anticipate “the pressing housing needs of the area in the next decade.”

The 2,500-unit development would have doubled New Fairfield’s roughly 8,000 population, and residents were “almost totally opposed to the project,” according to the piece.

“Many fear that Waters Edge will bring more traffic, possible pollution of the lake, severe pressures on the town to upgrade its school system and other services, higher taxes, and generally a rapid growth of the town which could overnight change the present quiet rural atmosphere to a crowded, noisy suburban atmosphere,” Johnson wrote.

One New Fairfield resident said he feared the town — which had been “expanding rapidly enough as it is” and barely keeping pace — was not prepared for a development as large as Waters Edge.

Sherman resident and vocal critic Malcolm Cowley disagreed with building “inexpensive housing units on some of the most expensive lakeside property in northern Fairfield County,” and argued the land was “miserably adapted” for a “crowded urban community” like Waters Edge, according to a letter he submitted to The New York Times.

Crowley also accused the Suburban Action Institute — which was known for fighting zoning laws it considered exclusionary and racially discriminatory — of “claiming to be acting on behalf of the black people in the inner cities, but actually … using them as pawns to get foundation grants.”

In October 1973, New Fairfield’s zoning commission denied the Waters Edge proposal, ruling that it had no jurisdiction to consider the application and could not do so since the town did not have a regulation on planned unit developments, The New York Times reported.

The Waters Edge controversy, however, did not end there.

The developers filed suit against the town, and Garden Cities Development president Neil Gold reportedly called the residents of New Fairfield and Sherman racists during a press conference announcing the lawsuit.

According to Johnson’s 1973 Bridgeport Post article, traces of racism could be found in some of the arguments against the project.

“One Sherman resident said he was against it because he had heard the developers were going to ship in large groups of poor Blacks from a city who would be totally unacclimated to the rigors of style of country living,” Johnson wrote, noting that the developers never said such a thing.

“The announcement that the housing was partially for lowincome groups apparently made certain citizens here gain the impression that a racial ‘transplant’ was going to take place,” according to Johnson.

Waters Edge never came to fruition and the mortgage Weil took out to purchase the 253 acres was foreclosed on six years later, according to land records.

About 40 years after the Waters Edge proposal, a nonprofit called the New Fairfield Housing Trust tried to lease a 38-acre parcel of town-owned land behind Meeting House Hill School for the construction of an elderly apartment complex.

Similar to the Waters Edge development, the proposal came with pushback and nothing was constructed.

“They were not anywhere in favor of it at all,” Moran said about residents’ opposition at the time.

During the commission’s Sept. 2 meeting, Senior Services director Kathy Hull suggested the land be considered again for affordable elderly housing.

Commission on Aging Chair Maureen Salerno said there was “a lot of misinformation” when the New Fairfield Housing Trust proposed its elderly apartment complex — but “the property is ideal” for what the town is currently considering.

Zoning commission members like Shane Cosentino have expressed support for affordable elderly housing in town.

“l know that when the school vote was going through, a big issue was seniors in town still being able to afford their houses with the taxes going up, so I think some type of affordable housing for seniors is needed (and) something we need to address,” Cosentino said during the commission’s meeting earlier this month.

The New Fairfield Zoning Commission will continue discussing affordable senior housing during its Oct. 7 meeting, which begins at 7:30 p.m. and will take place via Zoom.