Dear Chairwoman Kavros-DeGraw, Chairman Rahman, Vice Chairman Needleman, Vice Chairman Chafee, Ranking Member Zullo, Ranking Member Gordon, and Distinguished Members of the Connecticut General Assembly Joint Planning and Development Committee:
My name is Pete Harrison and I am the Connecticut Director of the Regional Plan Association which oversees Desegregate Connecticut, the pro-homes coalition of nearly 80 neighborhood and non-profit groups. Our coalition believes that the affordable housing shortage and climate crisis have converged, and the best way to address both at once is to promote a post-sprawl vision for our state that includes mixed-use, higher-density, and transit-oriented land use policies. Land use reform at the local and state level remains the most efficient and far-reaching solution to creating a more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable future for all of us.
I strongly support H.B. 6831. As members of this committee know, this bill represents the bulk of DesegregateCT’s Work Live Ride proposal introduced in 2023, which passed the House last session with 90 votes before running out of time in the Senate. We thank you for the opportunity to raise this proposal last session and for your consideration, feedback, and support. Coming into this session, HB 6831 reflects your feedback as well as feedback from other stakeholders from across the state and political spectrum. We are confident based on this feedback and the results in the House last session that this bill is ready to deliver more transit-oriented communities for the towns and cities that want them.
We believe that Connecticut is well-positioned to grow around its transit stations. Research from my colleagues at the Regional Plan Association shows that while areas served by transit with under 60-minute headways in Connecticut (half a mile from a bus or rail stop) represent only 13 percent of the state’s land (408,000 acres out of 3.2 million), they concentrate half the households and over two-thirds of the jobs that drive the state’s economy. On an acre basis, transit-oriented areas have more than five times the number of jobs compared to those distant from transit (2.6 jobs per acre in areas close to transit vs 0.5 in areas far from it).
However, this advantageous reality is almost exclusively the product of zoning decisions generations ago. Out of the 111 communities that have some type of transit, less than 20% have either a transit-oriented communities district or transit-oriented development overlap. In addition, by our estimation, there are around 40 communities that have some kind of TOD study or plan that remain unadopted. This cohort alone represents a significant opportunity for HB 6831 to demonstrate immediate value. Finally, as shown in our 2022 report “Get on Board for Equitable TOCs,” an overwhelming majority of the 40 communities with rapid transit (meaning rail or bus rapid transit) still retain restrictive zoning around their stations (see figure below). This squanders a significant amount of economic opportunity for more home and job creation and squanders opportunities to conserve greenfield, forests, and other natural spaces from sprawl development in other parts of the state.
To find out why more communities have not zoned around transit, since 2023, we have conducted nearly 70 meetings with local Planning & Zoning Commissions, hosted around 25 “Transit Oriented Communities Walk Audits” and have worked closely with groups from the private sector, environmental advocates, and faith-based communities to reach out at the local level. Despite loud anti-homes voices in certain towns, we found that many communities are in favor of transit-oriented communities and many have the political buy-in locally, but there are legitimate technical and financial barriers preventing progress. We have also found that in many other communities there is a “chicken and egg” problem where a lack of funding and technical assistance prevents political buy-in for action.
Rather than attempt to force those towns that aren’t interested to change, Work Live Ride is designed to encourage the towns and cities that do want to and need the help to understand technical issues like site design, water and sewer capacity, stormwater run-off, traffic impact, and other complicated planning processes. These are all issues that can be addressed with technical assistance and funding support. Alongside the newly launched Municipal Redevelopment Authority, which our coalition has advocated strongly for and is led by a former DCT Steering Committee member, we believe this strategy will have greater results than previous tax incentive-based efforts and fits well with the current administration’s goals, which is why the Governor commented last session that he would have signed Work Live Ride. We hope he can after this session. ORG providing strategic state-investments and MRDA providing tactical investments can create a critical mass of significant growth in our state without needing to leverage more state funding, which has added relevance during this session’s debate over the fiscal guardrails.
We know that creating a “post-sprawl” future will take time and will involve many different policy interventions and innovations. HB 6831 is designed to be a modest, necessary step in orienting our state towards this larger goal. Local municipalities that choose to create transit-oriented districts around their bus or rail station(s) may opt-in to this program by designing and passing a special zoning district through the normal public process of their planning board/commission. The size, location, and basic characteristics of this district will be up to the local planning commission in consultation with their respective wetlands agency, and, of course, the community at large. In fact, it is our belief that undergoing a transit district-level zoning process over many meetings will encourage more democratic participation in planning and zoning commissions than the current discretionary project-by-project approach.
There are a range of guidelines and incentives around best planning practices to ensure that the districts are designed in the most economically and environmentally sound manner, but still to the comfort level of the local community. These include preventing excessive requirements around parking, lot coverage and setbacks, floor-area-ratio, and height restrictions that combined often make individual projects impossible and dilute the density required to leverage transit ridership. To be clear, local commissions are still empowered to include these types of regulations, including site plan reviews, but they must be reasonable and justifiable, as determined by the Office of Responsible Growth (ORG), which will itself be required to create clear guidelines and to allow for local variances. The process is designed to create a diversity of transit-oriented districts that will have unique characteristics that take into account local history, geography, infrastructure, and opportunity for growth. The only “one-size-fits-all” approach in Connecticut is the one we currently have encouraging sprawl.
I wish to address specific concerns and common questions that were raised last session regarding the relationship between local commissions and the Office of Responsible Growth and cite the lines as reference:
Towns that do not opt-in are still eligible for any discretionary state grant (Line 105-107.) This is not a punishment for towns that decline to participate and they can opt-in at any future time.
TOC Districts can vary in size and don’t have to be a set amount of acres, providing maximum local discretion (Line 116-120)
Only three types of developments are allowed as of right and are still subject to any other local zoning regulations and relevant wetlands commission review (Lines 138-156) All other types of development are subject to the normal public hearing/special permitting process in the municipality
The three as-of-right developments within the TOC district are designed to encourage more naturally affordable homes to own and rent (missing middle below 9 units), to encourage developers to place potential 8-30g developments over 10 units where a town wants them to reduce legal fees for both sides, and to encourage deep, permanent affordable homes through publicly owned developments, non-profit/religious affiliated, or alternative equity models (Lines 138-156)
Towns that have already created TOD zoning that wish to opt-in can apply to be grandfathered in and will not need to change their zoning to participate (Line 197-200)
The ORG can not unilaterally force a town to opt-in (Line 203-208)
Planning guidelines within the district are not mandates and can be adjusted to local context, provided there is documented, reasonable justification (Line 231-238) The ORG will take case by case approaches in developing guidelines.
The local commission can appeal ORG decisions (Line 240-243) and can opt-out if still in disagreement and return funding already received (Line 258-260)
The bill exempts lands in a special flood hazard, wetlands, land designated for public park, land subject to conservation, coastal resources, areas necessary for the protection of drinking water, areas designated as likely to be inundated during a thirty year flood event (line 123-135)
Once a transit-oriented district is created and passed locally, the ORG will continue to serve as a liaison providing technical assistance to the local planning staff as needed and will help streamline state funding sources related to the infrastructure needs of the district. This district will also be counted as a housing growth plan for the Municipal Redevelopment Authority. Most importantly, the ORG will formally work with all necessary state agencies to make sure that opted-in local governments and projects get the funding and support they need as quickly and painlessly as possible. The ORG will oversee a regular staff-level meeting with other agencies to review planning and funding priorities and will make recommendations to ensure that all state actions are working towards the state’s economic and environmental goals based on the state’s 2025-2030 C & D Plan, which we testified in favor of last month.
I wish to thank the committee for drafting the bill so quickly, but I will now note that HB 6890 includes some language that we recommend amending or ask for clarification on:
In Section 1, Lines 3-12, the inclusion of 7-131d to 7131k, known as the Open Space & Watershed Land Acquisition Grant Program, should be removed. The only water and sewer expansion funding should be in 22a-477 which should be the only fund listed that is constrained to only include the extent the fund provides financial assistance for municipal sewer projects.
Section 1, Lines 53-57 defining Regular Bus Service should be amended to include only service with less than 60 minute headway in service. There are a handful of smaller transit districts in the northwest and northwest corners that have headways greater than 60 minutes that should be classified as transit adjacent communities instead of bus transit communities to better define bus transit as higher frequency service. They can still be eligible to participate if they choose, but it makes more sense to categorize them as transit adjacent.
In Section 1, Lines 268+, we would like to add that ORG has authority to delineate and clarify 8-2 in regards to the TOD to better assist towns in understanding what is required of their zoning and support towns amending their zoning.
Section 1 Lines 218-223 regarding the requirements for the TOC Districts. The intention is to make all of the parcels de facto mixed-use and we wish to make this more explicit by including mixed-use as part of the requirements. There is also a line about impact fees but our understanding is that this is already illegal and does not need to be included.
In Section 1, Lines 174-186 regarding Inclusionary Zoning, we are open to improving these designations. We have been following increasing amounts of empirical research demonstrating the counterproductive results of unfunded IZs in other states and counties as we have also been seeing a rise of them in CT. We believe the best way to encourage more deep, permanent affordability is a combination of significant increase in overall supply, supporting and protecting homerenters with vouchers and anti-gouging protections, and creating new publicly-owned and alternative equity models - all of which are either included in Work Live Ride or supported by our coalition elsewhere. IZs should be limited to only the most advantageous structures and markets and potentially where bonuses or additional subsidies are available.
Finally, I wish to include once again why we use the term “transit oriented communities” consciously as opposed to transit oriented development to emphasize that we are not talking about one-off projects or one planning tool among many. Instead, we are laying the foundation for a larger planning framework for Connecticut to move beyond the single-use, low-density, and car-dependent “sprawl” planning framework that for decades has stunted our state’s growth, reinforced economic and racial segregation, and damaged our ability to meet the climate crisis. In short, we are all in on creating a “post-sprawl” future for our state - one that emphasizes mixed-use, higher-density, and transit-oriented planning to unlock the economic potential of our legacy infrastructure especially public transit and to invest in its expansion; to make all of our towns and cities more diverse and more vibrant; and to make our communities safer, healthier, and greener.
No single state bill or local ordinance can adequately address the convergence of the affordable housing and climate crises in Connecticut. We need an “All of the Above” approach at all levels of government that includes supply, subsidy, and security. It is our firm belief that HB 6831 is well positioned to align the good intentions of all stakeholders to address these challenges and to seize the opportunity to create the steps to a post-sprawl future now. We urge your support of this bill.
