Stamford OKs affordable housing trust
More than $3 million to fund below-market-rate projects
STAMFORD — More than two years of work came to a head this week when the Board of Representatives formally approved terms for the Stamford Affordable Housing Trust.
The fund provides a home for money Stamford has long collected to bankroll new affordable housing projects. But, under a new directive, the trust fund provides a more public approach towards assessing the city’s below-market housing needs.
“There are lots of municipalities with funds set up to collect fees from developers and other sources to do affordable housing work, but none of them have set
up a trust like (Stamford) has,” David Panico — the attorney who wrote some of the rulers for Stamford’s trust — told the Board of Representatives’ Fiscal Committee in late February .
State-wide housing trusts exist across the country, from New Jersey to Nevada. Even Connecticut has its own version, established back in 2005.
Municipal housing trusts, however, are much less common. Because of that, city officials looked to Massachusetts to shape Stamford’s legislation. The Massachusetts state legislature streamlined the process for municipalities to create affordable housing trusts back in 2005. As of 2018, there were more than 100 local affordable housing trusts in the state
Stamford’s own trust became a legal reality in November 2020, after more than a year of public discussions. At its core, the trust attempts to better allocate money Stamford already receives for affordable housing projects.
“Usually, when the money goes
to the city, nothing happens,” said Land Use Bureau Chief Ralph Blessing, who now also serves as chair of the affordable housing fund’s Board of Trustees. Before, developers had to go through the city’s budgetary process to obtain these affordable housing funds.
Blessing said now the process is more streamlined.
“Housing Trust Fund comes into play, because the idea is less red tape to go through,” he said.
The fund takes money from two different revenue streams: linkage fees and fee-in-lieu payments.
While linkage fees are simply five percent of all building permit fees in Stamford, the later comes from Stamford’s Below Market
Rate housing program, an initiative that creates more housing stock for people that make between 25 percent and 80 percent of the region’s median income.
Sometimes, developers pay out their BMR apartment responsibility in full, like Building and Land Technology did for two of its Harbor Point properties.
When BLT sought to pay the city instead of providing belowmarket-rate housing in its properties, the company went to the Zoning Board with proposed affordable housing projects that could be funded with the fee-inlieu money.
But, under the Stamford Affordable Housing Trust Fund rules, the vetting process for new projects would belong to the Board of Trustees.
“The trust fund can wait until a good project comes along, (and) doesn’t have to make those ad hoc decisions that happened when a developer wanted to make a new payment,” Blessing said.
Even past recipients of fee-inlieu money say the new rules produce a more equitable path forward.
“The benefits are absolutely enormous,” said Board of Finance Chair Richard Freedman, who serves as president of affordable housing developer Garden Homes Management. While eligible, Freedman will not serve on the Board of Trustees because of his work in affordable housing. “When the developer does the vetting, the developer is not interested in the public policy ramifications of how the money is spent. That’s not their interest — the developer just wants to find a home for the money.”
Instead of projects coming along with the developer, the housing trust allows for trustees to decide what projects are worthy. The terms of the trust require Stamford to complete an affordable housing plan to help guide its decision making.
With a new green light from the Board of Representatives Monday, now the Stamford Affordable Housing Trust plays a waiting game. Once more than $3,000,000 become available in the trust, the Board of Trustees can begin soliciting projects, and a new chapter for affordable housing in Stamford can start taking shape.
Football players and other athletes in high-contact sports may soon have additional protection from concussions, thanks to a Westport company called Q30.
Developed originally by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Medical Center researcher David Smith who took inspiration from the physiology of woodpeckers, the Q-Collar is designed in a horseshoe shape to be worn around the neck. The device compresses jugular veins to reduce the flow of blood slightly from the cranial cavity, creating an extra “cushion” of blood to reduce jostling from impacts that can damage brain tissue.
In field tests involving nearly 300 high school football players who had imaging scans before and after their sports seasons, Q30 reported that 77 percent of teen athletes who tested the Q-Collar had what it described as “no significant changes” in their deep brain tissue, versus only 27 percent of those not using the device.
The Food & Drug Administration approved the device last week.
Q30 raised $10 million in funding the past few years from outside investors. The company was created in 2012 by co-CEOs Bruce Angus and Tom Hoey, who previously ran MoGo Sports that sells flavored mouth guards for athletes.
“The real genius behind Dr. Dave’s thinking which led to development of the collar was that he looked inside the body for the solution, rather than outside,” Hoey said Tuesday. “What he determined was that the best helmet technology ... was important for preventing skull fractures and lacerations, but it can’t get at the root cause of the problem, which is the brain sloshing and moving inside the head.”
Q-Collar hits the U.S. market after years of heightened awareness on the long-term effects of concussions, spurred by a 2013 “Frontline” documentary on NFL players and reinforced by the 2015 feature film “Concussion” starring Will Smith.
Former Carolina Panthers star Luke Kuechly was a prominent volunteer for Q-Collar product
testing, at the tail end of a career cut short by repeat concussions, with several other NFL players having used it.
Q30 is not the only Connecticut startup to have tackled the problem of concussions in the past decade. Norwalk-based i1 Biometrics created the Vector MouthGuard to alert coaches when athletes sustain jarring hits. The company was acquired in 2014, with the device sold today by Kirkland, Wash.based Athlete Intelligence.
Since 2010, the Connecticut General Assembly has passed a succession of laws intended to cut down on concussions, most notably that coaches receive annual training on how to spot symptoms of concussions. In response to a query, the executive director of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference Glenn Lungarini said that CIAC maintains a sports medicine advisory committee that is open to reviewing innovative new preventative products at the request of member schools.
“Our standards currently exceed what the [Centers for Disease Control & Prevention] asks for,” Lungarini told a Connecticut General Assembly committee in 2019. “I think that we're ahead of the game as far as that goes.” The Q-Collar will sell initially for $199, with discount rates for bulk purchases by leagues or schools. Hoey said the company will not sell the Q-Collar in retail stores, in order to ensure parents and athletic directors get the correct information as they weigh having children use the devices.
“From athlete to athlete it’s a little bit different, but there is a little bit of a break-in period,” Hoey said. “I would equate it [to] the first time you are wearing a mouth guard where it takes a period of time to get used to it, and then once you get use to it, you forget you are wearing it — that’s what almost all of the athletes have told us.”
The FDA’s Canadian counterpart was the first to approve use of the Q-Collar, with Q30 licensing the technology initially to the parent company of hockey equipment giant Bauer which sold it briefly under the NeuroShield brand. After the company filed for bankruptcy in 2016, Q30 reacquired the rights to sell the device in Canada.
Hoey said that Q30 has less than 10 employees today between Westport and New York City, but anticipates hiring up over the next few years for as many as 50 as sales get under way. He added the company’s preference is to keep its main office in Westport.