New residential construction lags
Lack of affordable housing options leaves many in region feeling trapped
Shaurice Bacon feels stuck in her housing, an apartment with not-quite-enough space for her family.
She’s lived in public housing in Bridgeport for two decades. She’s looked for other low-cost apartments, applied to housing choice voucher programs and explored rent-to-own options. She’s widened her search to include Hartford, New Haven, New Britain, anywhere in Fairfield County.
But she hasn’t found anything available in her price range.
“No matter how much I change it around, how much I rearrange my furniture, redecorate, I feel like I’m stuck,” Bacon said.
No state in the country has enough housing that’s available and affordable for the lowest income renters. Connecticut lacks 86,717 rental units that are available and affordable to tenants with extremely low incomes, according to estimates from the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
For Bacon, that means she and her two sons are crowded into a small apartment. She got the place when she was young and pregnant with her first daughter, unsure of what exactly the move would mean.
For other Connecticut residents with low incomes, it means they’re rent burdened — paying more than a third of their income to housing costs.
New residential construction, particularly of multifamily housing, has lagged in Connecticut for years, a problem that’s been exacerbated by the pandemic, experts said.
Through the pandemic, developers have seen rising costs of materials and labor for new construction projects. And a portion of what’s been built has been billed as luxury housing, not affordable for people with lower incomes.
“It’s always been a challenge, so you know developers can’t really produce housing that’s affordable for the lowest income renters,” said Andrew Aurand, vice president for research at the National
“No matter how much I change it around, how much I rearrange my furniture, redecorate, I feel like I’m stuck.”
Shaurice Bacon
Low Income Housing Coalition. “I think what we’ve seen during the pandemic is we’ve seen construction costs increase. Even before the pandemic, we were hearing about labor shortages.”
Last year saw drops in total building permits as well as a shift in the proportion of multifamily buildings compared to singlefamily housing.
As of the end of November, housing with five or more units represented just over 37 percent of new starts. In 2020, it was more than 55 percent, and in 2019, it was 59 percent, according to permit data compiled by the state Department of Economic Community Development.
And for the first time since 2018, Connecticut wasn’t predicted to surpass 4,400 new housing units in a year for 2021.
The biggest barrier to building more multifamily housing in Connecticut is restrictive municipal zoning laws, experts, developers and state officials said.
A couple of groups have announced legislative goals that aim to reform zoning law. These include introducing a “fair share” law that would set requirements for localities to create more affordable housing units, cutting down on minimum lot sizes and allowing mixed-income housing near train stations, among other measures.
“We know that in Connecticut, we need more housing overall,” said Nick Abbott, deputy coordinator at DesegregateCT. “Our permitting of new homes in 2021, at least of the first 11 months, was the lowest it had been in a comparable period over a decade.”
The group’s 2022 legislative agenda includes a measure to push transit-oriented communities by allowing mixed-income housing near train stations. They’re also advocating for smaller lot sizes, to allow more housing to be built on parcels of land.
DesegregateCT is also promoting allowing municipalities to create unified land use commissions by merging commissions with nearby towns, according to their website.
A new coalition of about 20 organizations is also pushing for a fair share law in the state that would require municipalities to build a share of affordable housing to meet needs determined by the state. The overall initiative is called Growing Together Connecticut.
The state would also set incentives and enforcement tactics, said Erin Boggs, executive director of the Open Communities Alliance. The alliance is an organizing member on the steering committee.
“From our perspective, Connecticut has this sort of dual housing crisis,” Boggs said in an interview.
“On one hand, we are one of the most expensive states in the coun
try, and on the other, we are one of the most segregated.”
Opponents of zoning reform bills introduced last year said it took too much power away from localities and pushed one-size-fits-all solutions for housing affordability on Connecticut’s towns. Officials representing Greenwich, Darien and parts of Stamford were among those who spoke out against the changes.
Connecticut towns are working on developing plans to increase the stock of affordable housing. Plans must be submitted by July under the law and should be amended every five years.
“In this day and age, you’re seeing it more that a percentage of homes are being put aside for affordability,” said Greg Ugalde, president of T&M Building Co. Inc.
Melissa Kaplan-Macey, vice president of state programs and Connecticut director at the Regional Plan Association, said making the process easier for developers and making it clearer exactly how long it will take would help.
“I think one of the easiest things we could do is to streamline the process and to make it transparent for everyone,” Kaplan-Macey said.
Zoning regulations that don’t allow for larger-scale multifamily housing in certain parts of town have made it difficult for developers to find enough land to build on — the more units that can be placed in a space, the more affordable it is to build, said Nandini Natarajan, chief executive officer of the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority.
And delays with getting permitting can make the process longer, which adds cost, she said.
“It takes a special developer with deep pockets to really stick it out,” Natarajan said.
The group has recently revised its guidelines for allocating its $10 million low-income housing tax credit program.
The program is one of the state’s leading funds for establishing affordable housing. Typically, developers pair it with other funding from the state Department of Housing or other programs operated by the finance authority.
The updated guidelines aim to bring more resources to underserved communities and include a pre-application process, updated distinctions between preservation and construction projects and new sustainability measures.
The zoning issues also tie in to public infrastructure and access to public water and sewage systems, said Michael Santoro, a specialist at the Department of Housing.
Ugalde said he’s hopeful that the increased political spotlight on affordable housing issues will affect change that helps make it easier to develop more units.
While Bacon’s been in her apartment for years and cares about the community, she hopes to find something bigger soon and wants to keep an eye out for a new place.
Right now, her baby sleeps in a portable bassinet. She wants him and her teenage son to each have their own rooms, the baby’s with a crib all his own. Her budget is from $700 to $800, but most of what she’s found in that range is one-bedrooms.
“When you see rent that’s starting at $1,300, and that’s nowhere your budget, it’s really, really discouraging,” Bacon said.