Council considers $80K housing study
NORWALK — Several national real estate and land use experts would visit Norwalk, assessing and making recommendations to improve housing options in the city if the Common Council approves the proposal.
In a plan approved by the Common Council’s Economic and Community Development Committee last Thursday, the nonprofit Urban Land Institute would help Norwalk plan for the future of housing in the city.
The program, which costs $80,000 that would be allocated from the city’s American Rescue Plan Act funds, would entail hosting three to five national experts for three days, said Jess Vonashek, chief of community and economic development for Norwalk.
The program would include sending background material on the city and recent developments in advance for the experts to review and, once the trip begins, providing the experts with a city tour conducted by a select group, Vonashek said.
“It will include them interviewing at least 20 stakeholders to understand what the vision for housing is in the city and, of course, we would continue to work with the community to be able to do that, much like we built an advisory committee for the South Norwalk train station work we were doing,” Vonashek said.
“With 20 stakeholders interviewed, they’ll come together as an expert group, and they’ll talk about the best practices and some of the land patterns we have along with the new zoning that will be passed. They’ll put together a presentation they’ll give to us at the end of the three-day period.”
A few weeks after the trip, the experts would share a full report of no more than 20 pages, outlining best practices they have seen work for other similar municipalities in the country, Vonashek said.
The Urban Land Institute would handle the logistics, including panelists’ travel, lodging and
workspace, while the city would be responsible for preparing briefing materials, arranging interviews with local stakeholders and planning a tour of the study area, according to city documents.
A five-day program in which eight to 10 experts visit, speak with 100 stakeholders, and give a 50-page report is available for $135,00, but the three-day trip was determined as sufficient for the city’s needs, Vonashek said.
“It’s an objective way to bring in national experts to be able to look at what we’re doing here in Norwalk,” she said. “We’re doing planning exercises for each particular project and want to look at the city as a whole. We want to look holistically at the city when we think about housing. We know there’ve been different housing projects across the city, they’re not all in our urban core, and we want to understand what the balance of that looks like.”
If the full Council approves the plan, the program would take place within the next six months, Vonashek said.
Plans for the visit arose from preexisting plans for an affordable housing study, she said.
Last year, the council approved $120,000 to go toward establishing an affordable housing plan, as required by the state after a change in the state’s Section 8 statute.
“We wanted to be able to focus not only on an affordable housing plan, but how it fits into the city itself and helping us determine what sort of affordable housing we need, where we need that housing,” Vonashek said. “If it should be in the urban core or if we should be looking elsewhere? What affordability levels do we require?”
Following the allocation of the affordable housing plan funds, the city is beginning the process to enter contract with the firm AKRF, according to the documents. AKRF was the sole company that responded to the city’s request for proposals, but having worked with Norwalk previously, Vonashek felt comfortable with the only reply.
AKRF’s work will include data collection and analysis on both market rate and affordable housing units, with the goal of shaping where the city wants to see more housing and why, Vonashek said.
In preparation for the Section 8 change, the city formed an Ad Hoc Affordable Housing Committee of the Council, with a goal to “bring forward issues, concerns, and recommendations to any body established to prepare the affordable housing plan required pursuant to such statute,” according to the committee’s mission.
Each Connecticut municipality was expected to have an affordable housing plan completed by June 1. However, there are no penalties for towns that do not submit their plan by that date, Norwalk Planning and Zoning Senior Planner Laura Kenny previously said.
The city opted to alert the state agency about its anticipated delayed plan, in favor of presenting a fully formed affordable housing plan.
“There was little information on what should be included in the plan and there aren’t really any punishments for not submitting one yet,” Kenny previously said. “We decided to have a consultant come in and do community outreach and figure out what do people want and need. The state has a committee forming that will discuss future requirements for affordable housing plans.”