Can Westport add enough affordable housing to meet state guidelines?
Officials split on reaching 10% threshold
WESTPORT — Officials are divided on whether Westport will reach the state-set benchmark of having 10 percent of its housing be considered affordable.
Planning and Zoning Commission Chair Danielle Dobin said the town is on target to hit 6 percent within two years and the 10 percent is possible if the town, state and residents work together to create affordable projects that make sense for Westport, such as small cottage-style clusters on town- or stateowned land.
“We have a lot in the pipeline and a lot we are planning to do,” Dobin said during this week’s community conversation on 8-30g, hosted by the Representative Town Meeting.
State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, is skeptical though and said it’s impossible for the town to hit that threshold.
“We’d be knocking down thousands of singlefamily homes to make that happen,” Steinberg said.
The 10 percent plays a key part in 8-30g proposals, a controversial state statute that allows developers to bypass local zoning laws if at least 30 percent of the project is considered affordable. Developers are able to submit these housing applications in municipalities that are short of the 10 percent affordability threshold. Municipalities can get moratoriums if they show they are making progress toward adding affordable housing.
The conversation comes as Westport’s moratorium is set to expire on Saturday.
Westport has 390 units that meet the state’s affordable definition, which includes deed-restricted units, according to the meeting. It needs 511 more units to qualify to be at the overall 10 percent compliance.
Since its adoption, 32 affordable units in town have already been created in town because of 8-30g, with 76 more expected as previously approved projects advance, including the one on Hiawatha Lane, Dobin said.
“On paper, it doesn’t sound like a lot when you go through the list, but it does have an impact on the people who live around them and for the people who can live in them,” she said.
Evonne Klein, with the Connecticut Center for Ending Homelessness, said 8-30g is an important tool and has created 147,000 affordable units across the state.
She said the challenges Westport is facing are seen in suburbs throughout Connecticut where residents are housing-cost burdened, meaning more than 30 percent of their income is spent on housing.
She said about 39 percent of renters, 30 percent of owners with a mortgage and 24 percent of owners without a mortgage are housing-cost burdened in town.
“You need to make $42.88 an hour to afford a rent or mortgage in Westport,” she said.
Westport has a little under 11,000 housing units, with about 3.8 percent considered affordable. Nearly 80 percent of those units are owner-occupied. About 8 percent of Westport’s housing stock is multi-family, Klein said. She said a misconception was that affordable housing built before 1990 when 8-30g was enacted doesn’t count and actually does count toward the overall figure.
Town Attorney Ira Bloom said there has already been interest from developers building affordable housing projects in Westport once the moratorium expires, including a pre-application filed for a 30-unit apartment building at 30 Maple Lane near the Greens Farms train station.
“Nobody can predict, but certainly the gate will be open for those applications,” Bloom said.
He pointed to what’s happening in New Canaan where the town’s request for a second moratorium was denied and there are now legal challenges to three housing proposals in town. He said these applications are hard to fight in court because it puts the burden on the town to show there is a public safety or health concern and many other factors aren’t considered, such as traffic. Towns lose about 75 percent of these cases, he said.
“Developers are looking at this part of the state — Fairfield County and a more affluent part of the state, and they are looking for opportunities,” Bloom said, adding the only way for towns to address it is to be proactive.
Dobin said she found from creating the town’s affordable housing plan that most residents want affordable housing and more diverse housing options in town if it’s done right. She said the opposition stems more from high-density projects that add traffic to already congested areas and don’t fit with that part of town.
“When these applications go through the P and Z, often it’s very challenging for neighbors,” she said, adding it’s hard for people to see a single-family home behind them get turned into a multi-story apartment complex.
She said the way to handle this is to approve the projects that make sense, work with developers on proposals so they work for Westport and to have the town create affordable housing projects of its own with nonprofits. She said this will hopefully reduce the 8-30g proposals that don’t fit in town.
One of the challenges to creating the projects on town-owned land though is getting funding, since having all affordable units isn’t profitable for developers. She said the RTM is looking into creating an affordable housing trust, similar to one in New Canaan, that could be used to fund these projects.
Klein said another $600 million is included in the state budget for affordable housing and some of the money could also be used for such a trust.
Steinberg said there should also be changes at the state level that streamline and clarify the system for what qualifies as affordable housing that towns get credit for, such as senior housing.
“8-30g, while well intentioned, has been a bit of a blunt instrument,” he said, calling the statute “adversarial” as it stands. He also said the percentage threshold should be lowered.
He said Westport is doing a lot of good things to increase its affordable housing stock, including the requirement for affordable units in multifamily projects.
“We’re not getting credit as a community that wants to do the right thing,” he said.