There are three things that almost every single local elected official in Connecticut seems to agree on these days. First, housing is too expensive. Second, our state needs to build more housing. Third, that housing needs to be built somewhere else.
The whole picture would be quite comical if this whole sad spectacle did not have some serious, very unfunny consequences for our state. Namely, a dumb, relentless wealth transfer from working families to landlords, lower disposable income for everyone either renting or buying a house, and a huge bottleneck for businesses that struggle to find new hires—or see them moving to cheaper places instead of wasting gobs of money on shelter expenses.
The good news, for once, is that after years of false starts, endless debates, and failure, Connecticut’s General Assembly finally managed to pass H.B. 5002, a really good, even if not quite ambitious, housing bill.
The response to the legislation has been a mix of endless whining, panicked screeching, and delusional fabrications about what the bill does. The most common complaint by the critics is that legislators don’t know what they are doing, and should let towns decide locally, because they are the ones that can truly fix the problem.
Let’s leave aside that the claims that they can “fix the problem” would be much more credible if they actually were, you know, doing something about it. The big, persistent problem in our state is that local government is engineered not to build. By default, our towns look at development as a problem, never taking into account the cost of not adding new units.
Consider the average housing application in an average Connecticut town. A developer has a parcel of land that is zoned as residential and wants to build some middle housing, say a rowhouse or a triple-decker.
He will need to send an application to be reviewed by the town land use staff. Then it will have hearings in at least one of two commissions, if not more (wetlands, zoning). Commissioners might raise concerns, demanding more paperwork or changes. Local residents might have some comments (if he is lucky) or completely freak out (the most common scenario for anything bigger than a single-family colonial). Most zoning codes are incredibly outdated, so anything that doesn’t look exactly like what someone in 1955 believed to be acceptable will require a variance or zoning change. This will involve more meetings and lawyers. If any of the aggrieved residents who show up to hearings feels spicy, there will be a lawsuit. If the zoning commissioners feel like the vibes are off, there will be a lawsuit.
Every single person in this Kafkaesque maze of regulations will be entirely convinced that what they are doing is wonderful and serves the interests of their town or some constituency. Every one of these steps adds costly delays, endless headaches, and frustration to anyone that just wants to build something and instead gets endless litigation.
What H.B. 5002 does is actually fairly simple: it simplifies this process so building new housing is easier in places where it makes sense to build. This will bring thousands of new units to the market in places where it makes sense to have them.
It allows housing to be built in commercial areas, helping create nice mixed-use development and focusing construction on places where infrastructure and services are already in place. It creates incentives for transit-oriented development, because housing close to public transportation is a good idea. The bill also eliminates silly rules that make building housing more expensive, like mandatory parking minimums, and gives resources to towns that decide to allow new construction.
The core idea is that towns should get to decide about development once, when drafting zoning regulations—not create these insane legal obstacle courses where they micromanage everything from start to finish, but nothing gets built. The current process empowers lawyers, not people, and it does so to the point of not having anyone consider not just the benefits but the need for getting more housing in our towns.
Now, H.B. 5002 is not perfect—far from it. The “Towns Take the Lead” section is a complicated, confusing process that will employ many consultants to draw affordable housing plans that no one will ever need to follow. This whole section would be much better (and less contentious) if towns were just asked to build new housing, affordable or not, and let the increased supply do the rest, instead of adding another layer of paperwork. Transit-oriented development rules should ask for a bit more density (although towns will likely do it themselves), and parking minimums should be fully repealed, not just for small developments.
Overall, however, this legislation will do a lot of good and do it in ways that everyone—except lawyers and folks addicted to complaining—will like. Connecticut has a big housing problem, but the reality is that 100,000 or even 200,000 dwellings really do not take up that much space. We could fit that many units in a land area equivalent to Bradley Airport just with three- and four-floor buildings, spread out all across the state.
This is not a hard problem to solve. We just need to get out of the way.