Major housing reform bill falls apart
“When you try to do big things, it’s really hard and no matter what your position is up here, it can be tricky. The vote count was what it was. It’s hard as leaders even to do the stuff we want to do, sometimes.” Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, D-Hartford
HARTFORD — A draft of a massive housing bill that could have exposed towns to lawsuits for failing to create affordable housing, fell apart under its own weight overnight Thursday in the state House of Representatives.
The revised bill, pared-down from 60 sections, would still have protections for landlords and tenants, but so-called Fair Share dwelling requirements, which would be decided on a regional basis, will be stripped out, said House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, an affordable housing advocate who described himself as “disappointed and saddened” by the political realities.
Asked during a regular presession meeting Friday morning with Capitol reporters what would be left in the bill to promote affordable housing, Rojas responded “nothing, there’s no beating around the bush here.”
What amounts to the 2023 version of the annual legislative logjam on affordable housing, at a time when thousands of additional units are needed around the state and the country, will demand a change of public attitudes to overcome. “It will take the people of the state of Connecticut demanding that we do something on it,” Rojas said. “And employers, you know, offered a little bit of help on housing, but I don’t think that they were ready to do something that was more demanding.”
“The majority leader is gutting his own bill,” said Speaker of the House Matt Ritter, DHartford. “When you try to do big things, it’s really hard and no matter what your position is up here, it can be tricky. The vote count was what it was. It’s hard as leaders even to do the stuff we want to do, sometimes.”
The early draft of the bill released late Thursday afternoon would have required the governor’s budget office to look at the needs for affordable housing in each of the state’s planning regions and allocate portions of responsibility to each of the region’s municipalities. Towns and cities would have been required to draw up plans and meet compliance benchmarks. It also would have made towns eligible for higher rates of school construction grants if they committed to the creation
of more affordable housing units and realize increases in student populations.
“We had a number of conversations yesterday. We didn't finish votecounting it, but it was going to be short of votes,” Rojas said. “Quite frankly, it had gotten to the point where even I was unhappy with how far we had to compromise on it. The Fair Share piece will not be in there.”
What remains in the legislation, which Rojas said could be debated as soon as Friday, would expunge the names of tenants who were subject to eviction proceedings, but did not reach final court action. Other sections of the remaining bill would submit landlords of unsafe or blighted housing to civil penalties of $2,000, up from $250. It would also shorten the amount of time for landlords to return tenant security deposits and interest on deposits.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, RNorth Branford, said that the weaknesses of the bill were underscored by the closeddoor atmosphere” in which Democrats, who hold a 98-53 majority in the House, wrote the initial draft.
“I did hear that the fair housing piece was stripped out,” Candelora said late Friday morning, as the House was beginning its day's business. “I think that what it says to this chamber, is we should not be crafting legislation in the dark. And I think that was a bill that was too big to be doing in secret. It was very hard to get support around it. We need to have a more open process. I'm not surprised that the Fair Share piece has come out of that bill, and we'll have to see what remains.”
State Rep. Tony Scott of Monroe, a top Republican on the legislative Housing Committee, said Thursday night that the bill was a massive “aircraft carrier” of different housing-related issues that could take up hours of discussion on the House floor.
“Not even being disruptive, not even fillibustering, just talking through the bill is going to take six to eight hours to go through this bill,” Scott said outside the house chamber. “There's a lot of stuff, from P and D (planning and development) and housing, all stuck together. This is a true aircraft carrier and we're running out of time. There's a lot of good stuff in the bill, and some stuff that I don't really like, but we're running out of time for sure. The landlords are telling us that ‘we don't want the reputation, so let's make sure we're punishing the ones that are doing the bad jobs.' ”
Dozens of towns have yet to submit affordable housing plans that were due a year ago.
Housing advocates were also disappointed at the apparent massive scaling down of the bill. Erin Boggs, executive director of the Open Communities Alliance, said the Fair Share concept was important and “would have been a major step toward addressing Connecticut's housing crisis, creating integrated housing choices, and kick-starting the state's economy, was one of the most meaningful and outcome-focused zoning reform bills proposed nationwide.”
She understood the political realities of the General Assembly, but saw the success this year in educating policy makers and communities on the importance of more housing to help the state economy. “The bill advanced through the legislature with its critical components intact,” Boggs said in a statement.
“To those who will claim ‘victory' about this development, you are responsible for perpetuating the housing crisis the state faces,” Boggs wrote. “You are holding back our economy, and for continuing to make Connecticut an unaffordable place to live for young people starting their first jobs, for middle-class workers who don't make a ton of money, and for seniors who desperately want to stay in the communities they've lived in their entire lives. You are, even today, too often acting in violation of state statutes and the state constitution, which require towns to advance economic opportunity and to tackle segregation.”