Fairfield County needs both state, local land use changes
Land use reform bills before the legislature do not mandate a single town construct a single unit of housing.
Fairfield County residents on both sides of the aisle, and both ends of the income spectrum, agree more and more on one thing lately — that our region would benefit from more affordable and inclusive housing for seniors, young adults, and lower-income residents including essential workers.
While opinion is split on solutions, there is growing consensus that doing nothing regarding housing is not an option. Acknowledging a problem is the first step towards solving it; this unity is new and powerful.
The county’s housing debate is generally split in two camps: those who advocate a comprehensive statewide approach to municipal zoning, and others who seek to maintain local control of land use. This is really a microcosm of the policy divide we’re working to bridge across the state.
In Hartford, lawmakers are considering bills including SB 1024 for statewide land use reform, which lays out the former approach as a means to increase and diversify Connecticut’s housing supply. An Assembly Planning and Development Committee hearing on this omnibus bill earlier this week lasted for 24 hours.
In Fairfield County, officials suggest town-by-town efforts and local control over land use are sufficient to address our housing challenges.
The truth is local officials do not have to choose between state or local action. Residents should not have to settle for just one or the other. Fairfield County can benefit from state and local land use actions.
To be clear, the land use reform bills before the legislature do not mandate a single town construct a single unit of housing. The legislation simply makes it easier for communities to build different types of housing, like less expensive multifamily housing.
Currently, most communities are legally prohibited from doing so. For example, multifamily housing can be constructed as-of-right (meaning without a public hearing) on 2 percent of land in Connecticut, according to the Desegregate CT coalition’s Connecticut Zoning Atlas. Single-family housing can be built as-ofright on 90.6 percent of land.
SB 1024 would legalize accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, on land currently reserved for single-family homes. It would also enable and encourage more development along transit corridors and main streets. Encouraging new housing where development already exists is sound environmental policy. The same is true of provisions in the bill to cap parking minimums for new construction, given automobile carbon emissions are irreversibly warming the planet.
As Connecticut House Majority Leader Jason Rojas told a group of Darien residents during one of multiple recent Fairfield County Talks Housing virtual forums, local and state authority should complement, not compete with, one another.
“The reality is that every service delivered at the local level — whether it’s the tax collector, board of education or fire department — they’re all able to do their job because state law enables them to and empowers them to,” Rojas said.
New England states have quickly adopted similar changes. Recently, Republican governors in Massachusetts and Vermont signed similar bills that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
Municipal officials should absolutely have the resources they need to influence land use in their own community. That’s why the organization I lead, Fairfield County’s Center for Housing Opportunity, delivers resources like detailed housing data and analysis for all 23 Fairfield County towns and cities, and a comprehensive suite of best practices for community engagement and planning around housing that help communities curate their own housing future.
Yet towns have exercised exclusive control for nearly
100 years and now our state faces an 86,000-home deficit for our lowest-income residents, according to our recently released statewide housing needs assessment with the Urban Institute. Some 35.7 percent of households in Fairfield County are housing-cost burdened, meaning they spend more than a third of their income on housing costs, up from
31.5 percent since 2000. These are the results of uninterrupted local control of land use. If we want different results, we must change the status quo. Housing markets tend not to adhere to town boundaries, and we cannot expect towns to be able to solve housing challenges at scale.
“Every municipality in the state is under assault right now,” Greenwich First Selectman Fred Camillo said at a recent Board of Selectmen meeting, speaking about
SB1024. “Here in Greenwich we are really, really working hard to diversify our housing and to increase our affordable housing stock. We’re doing that and looking at new and different ways to do that.”
FCCHO and our fellow housing advocates are gratified by this sentiment. If officials are sincere about creating more housing options, they should welcome statewide land use reform and guidelines that make it easier for them to do so.
We need both state and local action on housing immediately. We cannot afford to limit ourselves to one or the other. The diversity and economic vitality of Fairfield County is at stake.
Christie Stewart is director of Fairfield County’s Center for Housing Opportunity.