CTNewsJunkie | By: Jamil Ragland
HARTFORD, CT — When House Bill 5002 passed the General Assembly last Tuesday, it was celebrated as an important step in addressing the state’s oft-discussed housing crisis. However, advocates may have been counting their chickens before they hatched.
The bill has been sitting on Gov. Ned Lamont’s desk for more than a week, with advocates holding their breath, as Lamont has expressed some hesitancy over the bill’s version of fair-share legislation known as “Towns Take the Lead.”
In remarks made at his news briefing marking the end of the legislative session last Thursday, Lamont said it was important to get more housing in the state and that regulation slows down the construction process. While he noted that he was sympathetic to the bill, he said he would have to take a look at it.
“I think it was kind of dumb to put this big number that some Ph.D said, ‘Hey Westport, you’re responsible for this number of units.’ Don’t know if that accomplished much,” Lamont said, referring to the Towns Take the Lead provision under which regional housing needs are determined and then towns must include the construction of a certain number of housing units as part of their five-year 8-30g plans. ”I know it’s supposed to be a north star and it’s just a goal and it’s just a planning document, but everybody’s hair is on fire [due to the requirements].”
Senate Republicans latched onto Lamont’s comments and called on him to veto the bill.
“This bill represents one of the most aggressive attacks on local control our state has ever seen,” they said in a joint statement issued on Friday. “It’s got state government mandates that override the voices of people in our towns and cities. It strips Democrat and Republican local leaders of the ability to guide growth responsibly in their communities. It forces density from the top down, with little concern for infrastructure, public input, safety, or community character. It deprioritizes many towns from much needed state grants.”
The Senate Republicans said that the governor should go back to the drawing board and work across the aisle to find “real solutions” for the state’s housing woes.
For housing advocates, though, Towns Take the Lead is indispensable to solving the housing crisis.
Hugh Bailey, policy director for the Open Communities Alliance, acknowledged that the omnibus bill requires towns to set goals to work toward and noted that towns need to have a planning goal for the future.
“I understand that coming at this cold, as some people are — they see numbers, they see this and that,” he said. ”And they think it’s going to mean something that they don’t want for their communities. But it really is a thoughtful policy that’s tailored to individual communities. And it’s all based on local planning and zoning. So it’s all based on what the people on the ground know about their towns and how they can make this work.”
Erin Boggs, executive director of the Open Communities Alliance said opponents of the bill have been spreading misinformation about it, either to intentionally misrepresent the legislation or because they don’t understand the bill themselves.
“I think it’s important that our political leaders don’t get sucked in by what is functionally fake news,” Boggs said. “We need to be making our public policy decisions about fundamentally important issues on real information, and that’s the only way we are going to be able to responsibly address it.”
For some advocates, the bill still doesn’t do enough to protect Connecticut’s residents. Sean Ghio, policy director for Partnership for Strong Communities, said this is the most positive development he’s seen in housing in Connecticut in almost a decade, but key elements are missing.
“I’d say the largest disappointment is that the legislature wasn’t able to pass just-cause eviction protections for the second year in a row,” he said. “There’s things that the state could be doing for people that are struggling with housing right now that aren’t in there. And just-cause eviction is a great example of that. If they could have passed that, that would have had tangible help to so many families to create more stability in their housing and their lives.”