Battle over suburbs redraws political lines

A familiar fight is taking shape in advance of the new legislative session, with one side speaking out in favor of private property rights and the other pleading to maintain, or even tighten, strict government regulations.

What’s novel is which side is taking what position.

The issue is minimum lot sizes, which can sound esoteric but goes a long way toward explaining why Connecticut looks the way it does. In short, many suburbs require giant pieces of land for each single-family home, a vestige of a time (not so long ago) when communities were explicitly designed based on exclusion. If those regulations were relaxed, there would be many more opportunities for more people to live where they want to, with accompanying benefits for equity, the environment and, not least, the state economy.

The conservative response, as exemplified by a Republican state representative’s recent opinion piece, takes the stance that zoning as it exists needs to stand, regardless of what property owners want to do with their land. That puts them in a maybe-unfamiliar position of supporting what appears to be the big government solution, but if your core belief is that suburbs are sacrosanct, maybe this is inevitable.

The push to loosen minimum lot sizes is coming from Desegregate CT, an advocacy group that caused a stir last session with its push for zoning reforms that ultimately led to a new law allowing the construction of accessory dwelling units, occasionally known as granny pods, which are a separate home on a residential property.

It could be an apartment over a garage, a basement with a separate entrance or another building altogether, but the idea is that more people would be able to afford to move into exclusive towns. Given that ADUs would most often rent to someone the property owner already knows — a grandparent, for instance — it’s fair to ask just how much desegregating such a policy would accomplish. Still, it’s a start.

Now the group is pushing to take on minimum lot sizes, which makes sense. A lot of good could come from reform here.

Zoning exists for a reason, and when someone buys a home they have a reasonable expectation that someone isn’t going to build, say, a slaughterhouse or a paint factory next door. But strict zoning also helps make suburbs into the stereotypically sterile place they’ve always been known as. If all you can build is single-family homes on large lots, you lose any sense of dynamism or activity, to say nothing of economic growth.

Some people don’t want dynamism. That’s fine. But there’s an odd trope in this country where people who buy a house think they should get veto power over the property down the street, too. It’s not supposed to work that way. Neighbors should have a say, like anyone in town or the state by virtue of who gets elected and what laws pass, but they shouldn’t get to dictate what happens on land they don’t own, especially when changes could have widespread benefits beyond a homeowner’s personal inconvenience.

But this is what opponents of reform are asking. The state representative in Greenwich says zoning reform would “force” towns to increase housing density, but that’s not on the table. Property owners would be allowed to build more residences, but not made to do anything.

Not that such an idea should be out of bounds. Massachusetts, for example, is seeing a new law take effect this year that would push nearly every town in the Boston area, some 175 jurisdictions, to either build multifamily housing or lose access to state funding. It’s unclear how this will play out, but it’s noteworthy that Massachusetts is supposed to be the economic model Connecticut is striving to meet (also, that Massachusetts has a Republican governor).

Back here in Connecticut, opponents of reform are falling back on traditional complaints, including that those seeking change are just a front group for the “developers” we’re all supposed to hate.

For those keeping track, that means conservatives on this issue are in favor of strict government regulations, but against people making money. Weird.

These questions, though, don’t fit easily into traditional party breakdowns. If it were only Republicans in opposition, reform would sail through. But it’s Democrats who too often stand in the way of anything new in Connecticut housing, even as it’s increasingly clear that a lack of housing is hurting the state economy. If no one can afford to live in your town and the only option available includes an hourlong commute, it doesn’t matter what kind of jobs are on offer.

State-level reform is needed, but as last session showed, getting there won’t be easy. Even a slimmed-down ADU plan only passed with an opt-out clause.

It will be even tougher in an election year. Still, it’s a fight worth having.

Suburbs were built on exclusion. They were designed that way, and they did such a good job that even decades later they continue to exclude in ways that many in this country thought were part of our past. We’re all paying the price for it.