Dear Members of the Housing Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly:

My name is Melissa Kaplan-Macey and I am Vice President for State Programs and Connecticut Director for Regional Plan Association. Regional Plan Association is a research, planning and advocacy organization with a 100-year history working in Connecticut. RPA is dedicated to developing and promoting ideas to improve the economic health, environmental resiliency and quality of life of the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan area. Over the course of our history, we have developed four, once in a generation, long-range regional plans, each addressing major issues of its time. Our Fourth Regional Plan, released in 2017, identified the housing affordability crisis as one of the central challenges facing our region today.

Today I would like to express significant concern with SB. 169, which RPA opposes in its current form – An Act Concerning a Study of the Effects of Affordable Housing Policies in the State. This bill directs the Commissioner of Housing to study the effects of Section 8-30g on the state.

Section 8-30g is one of the state’s most important zoning laws and is a key statute in inducing towns to comply with their long-standing obligations under the state’s Zoning Enabling Act to ​“promote housing choice and economic diversity in housing, including housing for both low- and moderate-income households.” There is broad recognition that we have an affordable housing crisis in Connecticut that is felt by residents across all ages and income levels. Constrained supply, driven by resistance to creating more homes in many communities across our state, has made housing more expensive for everyone and unattainable for too many. We are not creating enough affordable housing to meet the needs of our residents, and we cannot afford to weaken one of the few tools we have to produce affordable units in our towns.

We stand strongly against attempts to weaken 8-30g and support policies that strengthen this critical tool to make it easier to create affordable housing in communities across the state.

“We’re all in this together,” has been an oft-repeated refrain throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is really just an empty phrase when the grocery store workers, teachers, home health aides, delivery people and others essential to the well being of all towns do not have access to affordable homes in the communities they serve. When we don’t encourage homes for people of all incomes, we perpetuate the steady habit of excluding lower income residents, the local workforce, our young people, and our older residents from communities across our state.

Section 8-30g is one of the few tools we have in Connecticut for producing the affordable homes we need to meet the very real affordable housing needs that exist in all of our communities across the state.

The fact on the ground is that many towns across Connecticut continue to protest the development of smaller, denser, more affordable homes -- walkable to services or transit -- that we need. 8-30g means that where a developer is willing to build inclusionary housing, towns must show good reasons for preventing these homes from being constructed.

Thanks to Section 8-30g, a town cannot avoid affordable housing development by simply zoning it out or by saying we don’t need any more housing. We need more, not fewer, tools like Section 8-30g to make developing lower cost housing easier in every community across the state. Connecticut needs more homes for more people in all communities, not just in some. We need to recognize that it’s not a zero-sum game. Connecticut’s communities can be great places to live and can also be more affordable. Affordable housing is an asset, not an enemy.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony.