Report: Conn.'s segregation among worst in the U.S.
Hartford, above, and Bridgeport remain among the most segregated in the nation in terms of race and ethnicity and among the highest in income inequality.
Connecticut is one of the most racially and economically segregated places in the country and both forms of division are increasing in at least some areas of the state, according to a new state-funded study.
“Segregation in the state of Connecticut is high,” concluded the 106-page report, the result of months of study by a New York City-based economic consulting firm Urbanomics, which was hired by Governor Ned Lamont’s Office of Policy and Management to conduct the analysis.
When looking at the state as a whole, racial segregation has decreased somewhat since 1990, but zoom in and data shows that in many suburbs it “is holding steady or increasing,” the report said. Meanwhile, economic inequality is increasing across Connecticut.
The report blames a slew of historical practices — including exclusionary zoning, allowing local officials to control what gets built, opposition from residents to new development, bias in real estate and an overall lack of sufficient motivation to change — for creating segregation and allowing it to persist and in some cases grow in recent decades.
“There are serious ramifications for people, for communities, and for our state to continue to not address this issue,” said Connecticut’s House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, adding that an affordable housing panel he co-chairs plans to review the report’s recommendations to consider potential legislative proposals.
Research has long shown that where someone grows up matters. Those growing up just a few blocks apart in different municipalities have drastically different outcomes in life.
Life expectancy is much shorter in segregated neighborhoods, data from the National Center for Health Statistics show. Children who grow up in segregated neighborhoods are also more likely to be incarcerated when they grow up, have children young and never make above poverty wages, a team from Harvard, Brown and the U.S. Census Bureau found. The Brookings Institution found it costs 3.5 times more to live in communities with well-resourced, high-performing schools in Connecticut, one of the largest disparities in the country.
Rojas, the first person of color in the state’s history to become a leader of either the state Senate or House, has for years made it his priority to try and tackle housing segregation in the state and pushed for this report to be complete. He said he didn’t find any surprises in the report, but hopes it opens others’ eyes to the reality of these pervasive problems.
“It confirms what I already knew to be true. But consistently seeing people doubt that segregation exists in Connecticut — or even exists to the extent that it does — I don’t know that we can deny that looking at this report,” he said during an interview.
The report found Connecticut’s metropolitan areas, including Bridgeport and Hartford, remain among the most segregated in the nation in terms of race and ethnicity and among the highest in income inequality.
The report found the majority of municipalities — 124 of 169 — have seen increases in the wealth gap, with North Haven and Old Lyme increasing the most. Racial and ethnic segregation has been reduced in core central cities and increased in some suburbs.
Asked Thursday about the report’s findings, Lamont said it was on his reading list, and wanted to know if people are living in segregated neighborhoods by choice, or because they aren’t able to move elsewhere.
“Is it all about geography and where people live? Or is it about self selection in schools? Is it self selection and how we live our lives or where we work? I got to do a little work on that” to understand, he said.
The report completed for his team did not get into personal preferences of where people choose to live.
Recent research published in the American Economic Association Journal by researchers from Harvard and MIT, however, found when low-income families and individuals who receive government-subsidized housing vouchers were given the assistance to use their voucher in another community — and move out of
economically isolated neighborhoods — 53% did.
“Many low-income families do not have a strong preference to stay in low-opportunity areas and that barriers in the housing search process are a central driver of residential segregation by income,” the report from Harvard and MIT concluded.
In June 2021, state legislators asked Lamont’s office to compile this report to understand just how segregated the state is, and whether government subsidized housing — and where it’s located — is fueling this separation.
The report found that in Connecticut, those who live in subsidized housing are disproportionately people of color. For example, while 29% of residents in the state are people of color, 71% of those living in federally-funded subsidized housing are.
The researchers found a connection between segregation and where government subsidized housing is built or used. But they were not able to directly blame the presence of government subsidies on that reality because of “many other factors that contribute to housing choice and development patterns.”
Those contributing factors include exclusionary zoning practices and resistance from local officials and residents to allow anything but expensive singlefamily homes to be built on large lots.
This is not a new finding. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s business college in 2006 found Connecticut had the 15th most-regulated residential building environment. The former chair of the Hartford Planning and Zoning Commission and Cornell Law professor
in 2021 found over 90% of zoned land in Connecticut only allows for single-family housing, often on large lots. Connecticut also had more law firms than any other state specializing in land use and restrictive zoning, Brookings Institution found in 2011. And in a 2015 federal study of 21 states, Connecticut had the second highest level of concentration of affordable housing in high-poverty neighborhoods, largely because of zoning restricting it being built in better-resourced suburban communities.
The report released last week recommended vouchers as a potential solution to giving more people choices to live in well-resourced, integrated neighborhoods — but pointed out the value of those vouchers is far behind what is needed to find a place to rent in many communities.
Rojas acknowledged that huge barriers exist for people to find a place to use vouchers, but said the recommendation for increasing funding for more vouchers stands a chance amid political headwinds.
Rojas said not enough of the members in his party have been willing to tackle segregation. Democrats have controlled the state legislature for over two decades and the governor’s office for 13.
“It’s painful incrementalism. We will continue to try and inch our way forward,” said Rojas.
Just getting this study to happen was an uphill task.
In June 2021, members of the General Assembly in June 2021 passed legislation that called for the governor’s office to complete an analysis on whether the state’s subsidized housing policies are fueling segregation every two years, beginning
with a first report released by January 1, 2022. That never happened. So, in the state budget approved in 2022 the legislature included $140,000 for the governor’s policy office to hire a contractor to do the report and ended the requirement that it be done every two years.
Some are pessimistic this report will just gather dust on a shelf.
“There’s a long trail of studies. When is the state going to do something about it,” said Sean Ghio, policy director at the Partnership for Strong Communities, a housing advocacy nonprofit. “We should be long past the point of having to prove this over and over again.”
The governor has been loath to force suburban towns to allow affordable housing to be built, hoping instead he can lure them with state aid for the construction of such housing.
Instead, he said, he is focused on helping to fund more market-rate housing to be built in more cities.
“In our cities, we have a lot of growth, a lot of opportunity. A lot of people want to move there. They often are saying, ‘I need all types of housing, including market rate housing,’ and that brings a certain diversity,” he said on Thursday.
In Hartford, the state has backed an approach by paying to have more marketrate housing built in segregated communities that already have a lot of subsidized affordable housing. Of the $800 million in funding the legislature included for the construction of new housing in the current state budget, $60 million is earmarked for construction this approach.
“We’re trying to take that statewide,” Lamont said Thursday.