Olha Yarynich

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont rejected an omnibus housing bill on Monday, halting a long-anticipated effort to address the state’s affordable housing shortage.

The legislation, passed in the state Senate on May 30, was a composite of several housing proposals, many of which lawmakers and advocates have floated for years. The bill would have pushed towns to zone for more affordable units, encouraged smaller-scale multi-unit developments like duplexes and townhomes and eliminated parking requirements for new developments — among other changes intended to boost the state’s housing supply.

“I don’t do a lot of vetoes,” Lamont said at a press conference Monday, when he also vetoed a separate bill that would have extended protections for striking workers. “A veto doesn’t mean dead stop. A veto means we can do a lot better, and I hope we can do that.”

Prior to announcing the veto, Lamont said that some of the housing bill’s opponents were misrepresenting its content, but he also raised concerns about excessive regulatory requirements for construction projects. In his Monday announcement, he cited a lack of support from local officials across the state, whom he said are essential for meaningful housing policy.

Connecticut House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, a Democrat, along with the chairs of the General Assembly’s Housing Committee and Planning and Development Committee, were vocal proponents of the legislation.

The bill, which prompted nearly 12 hours of debate in the House, included provisions extending beyond housing development. One would have required roughly 30 more towns to create fair rent commissions; another would have prohibited the construction of “hostile architecture” designed to discourage homeless people from sleeping in public spaces.

All of Connecticut’s Republican legislators, along with four Democrats in the Senate and 18 in the House, voted against the bill.

To the bill’s proponents, which included a coalition of statewide advocacy organizations, Lamont’s veto represented a disappointing concession to opponents who they said misconstrued the bill’s goals.

“Every element of the bill was backed by empirical research, expert and non-expert supportive testimony, and common sense,” two advocacy groups, Desegregate CT and the Regional Plan Association, wrote in a Monday press release. “Opponents, many of them seemingly unaware of the details of the bill, painted it as an assault on local control or a one-size-fits-all power grab. None of this is true. The bill does not tell towns what to do and nor does it punish them if housing is not built.”

Opponents argued that the legislation would limit local autonomy by issuing blanket requirements for municipalities and would stifle public input in development. They also said that the bill attempted to advance several unrelated, complex proposals at once.

“New Haven is not East Lyme. Hartford is not West Hartford. Waterbury is not Litchfield,” Andrew Fowler, a spokesperson for the Yankee Institute, a conservative Connecticut think tank, wrote to the News. “Every municipality is unique, and they should be able to shape housing policies that reflect their needs.”

Affordable development in towns and suburbs

The bill would have required that towns plan and zone for a quarter of their “fair share” allocation, an assigned number of affordable units based on factors like a town’s per capita wealth and relative affordability. The wealthiest towns with the lowest rates of housing production relative to their surrounding regions would have been incentivized to create the largest number of affordable units.

In May, the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management published the results of its Fair Share Housing Study. A Portland-based research firm wrote the report, which found that Connecticut would need to build at least 120,000 units of housing to address underproduction, homelessness and a lack of affordable housing for lower-income families.

The report recommended that municipalities with low rates of affordable housing, low housing production and more nearby jobs should be responsible for larger shares of affordable housing development.

The Open Communities Alliance, a Connecticut civil rights organization that focuses on housing justice, championed that proposal, which was nicknamed “Towns Take the Lead.” According to the organization’s executive director, Erin Boggs, Connecticut advocates have worked on this effort for at least five years.

Past versions of the proposal involved legal enforcement provisions for towns that didn’t meet their prescribed allocation. This year’s bill would have incentivized towns to meet their “fair share” by giving them priority for discretionary funding. Towns would have been charged with carving out a “realistic development opportunity” for affordable housing but would not have faced the risk of lawsuits if they didn’t build their allotted units by a given timeline.

“Towns are able, under this law, to say, ‘this number won’t work for us, and here’s why,’’ Boggs said, referring to targets for affordable units.

They would also be mandated to take “proactive steps” like pursuing resources for development. 

Opponents called that requirement a threat to local finances and infrastructure.

Rep. Tony Scott — a Republican who represents Monroe and parts of Trumbull and Easton — said on the House floor that zoners would have to “knock down farms” in order to make room for affordable development in that town, since it has relatively few commercial areas.

The state Department of Agriculture administers programs to protect farms statewide from non-agricultural use and residential development. Under the legislation, protected farms and all property “subject to conservation or preservation restrictions” would not be considered developable for residential property.

As of January 2024, 481 farms statewide had secured these protections.

Housing near transit options

The legislation also would have created a funding incentive for towns that zone for varied housing near bus stations and other transit hubs, forming what is called a “transit-oriented district.” According to the bill, transit-oriented communities must provide for “middle housing developments” like duplexes and townhomes.

Desegregate CT has championed this framework, called “Work Live Ride,” for three consecutive legislative sessions. Nick Kantor, Desegregate CT’s program director, said that his team worked with roughly 60 or 70 municipal planning and zoning commissions to emphasize that the proposal let municipalities opt in rather than constraining them.

Earlier in the session, legislators considered the Work Live Ride proposal in a standalone bill. The state Planning and Development Committee heard hours of testimony debating the legislation in February, as small town authorities from throughout the state raised concerns about losing authority over zoning. Kantor said that listening to towns and adapting the policy would be essential to successfully implementing it.

“There’s no silver bullet for this stuff,” Kantor told the News in early June. “Housing and cost of living and transit and the environment are all interrelated on so many levels, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re back next year with Work Live Ride 2, or some other version of it.”

Multi-unit housing in special zones

The bill would have required that towns adjust their zoning regulations to allow for so-called “middle housing” — multi-unit developments like duplexes, multiplexes and townhomes — on properties previously reserved for commercial use. These developments would be approved by default, not requiring individual permits or hearings.

In last year’s legislative session, Democrats proposed a similar law incentivizing middle housing. Rojas testified in support of that bill, arguing it would expand housing options for people from a variety of incomes while avoiding high housing density, a common concern associated with apartment buildings.

This year, critics argued that because the policy would bypass permit processes and public hearings, it interfered with municipal autonomy.

But Sean Ghio, the policy director at the state advocacy group Partnership for Strong Communities, said it’s a mistake to see housing as an exclusively local issue.

“Housing markets are driven by labor markets,” Ghio said, explaining that he works in Hartford but lives in Cheshire, a smaller town nearby. “Our tiny municipalities are not the right unit of measure for having a healthy housing market.”

Another section of the legislation provided an incentive for towns to create “priority housing development zones.” These zones must allow pre-approved multifamily development and “be likely to substantially increase the production of new dwelling units.”

Lamont introduced that plan among his legislative proposals at the start of the session.

“This change will make it easier for a private developer to invest in housing opportunities within that zone,” Lamont’s office wrote in a fact sheet about the legislation, referring to the part of the policy that allows those developments to bypass individual approval processes. 

The fact sheet added that municipalities would “maintain control” during the development process within a “simple and predictable” structure.

For towns that agreed to build these priority zones, a legal incentive was on the table. The bill would have made it easier for participating towns to temporarily bypass a statute requiring towns to justify in court why they denied a proposal for affordable housing development. 

The Connecticut General Assembly’s legislative session adjourned on June 4.