Litchfield County Housing Needs Assessment Tool

The Need for Different Housing Types

Housing needs tend to change over the course of the lifetime of individuals and families. In seeking to understand housing needs in your community, it can be helpful to reflect on the types of homes we’ve lived in as children, young adults, older adults (with or without children) and senior citizens. It is very rare for a person to live in a single type of housing over the course of their entire life.

Younger households tend to seek smaller, often rental, housing, while growing families often seek larger homes, both rental and ownership. And as people enter their later years, they very often seek to downsize to smaller homes, in many cases townhouses and apartments that require less upkeep and maintenance than single-family homes. Does your town have an adequate supply of the different types of housing you have needed or will need in your lifetime?

If the vast majority of your town’s housing stock is single family detached, you are not meeting the housing needs of the many individuals and families that don’t need or can’t afford this option at this time in their lives. Single family detached homes are the most expensive type of home to build and maintain. It also takes up a lot of land, especially in towns with large minimum lot size requirements and can lead to residential sprawl rather than compact New England villages and neighborhoods surrounded by open space.

Having zoning regulations in place that allow for housing types beyond single-family homes is critical for expanding housing supply and affordability. Check out your town’s housing plan, does it call for zoning regulation amendments that would allow duplexes, townhomes, and other 3+ family housing options? Are these types of developments–often called the ​“missing middle”--supported in your community?

A majority of the households in Litchfield County (61%) have one or two people in them but only 35% of our housing stock is designed for this size household with 2 or fewer bedrooms. The majority of our housing stock (65%) has been built with the needs of a family of 4 or more people in mind, having at least 3 bedrooms. But only 33% of households have 3 or more people. Check out how many smaller households are in your town and how well your housing stock fits your household sizes.

Our Aging Population

Since 2000, the number of households in Litchfield County with members under 18 has declined while the number with members over 65 has increased. Many seniors in our towns would like to ​“downsize” to a smaller, lower maintenance, accessible housing option, but these options are not available in their town. These older residents often stay in their 3+ bedroom homes due to a lack of other options. This limits availability of the 3+ bedroom homes for families that need them.

Check out how the number of households with seniors has grown in your town and in the region as a whole. You can also see below, how many residents over 60 years old your town has. Does your housing stock offer accessible and affordable options for these residents as they age?

Meeting the Needs of Home Renters

The percentage of households that rent their homes in our region and across the state has been steadily increasing. Statewide, approximately 34% of households rent while in Litchfield County 24% of households rent. The fact that fewer households rent in Litchfield County than in the state as a whole is likely due to a lack of supply of rental housing options, not a lack of demand. High housing prices (due in part to a lack of less expensive housing types) are leading many, especially younger people, to view renting as a smarter move than purchasing a home.

Many people need or want to rent at different times in their lives, yet both the number and type of rental options in most of our towns is very limited. Each of our communities needs to have a sufficient supply of rental options to meet the needs of those who live and those who work in our towns. Check out the percentage of your housing stock that is available for rent compared to the state and county average. Consider the types of rental options available. Are they mainly single family homes which can be expensive to rent, or are there a sufficient supply of duplexes (2 units), townhomes (3-4 units), or multifamily rental options (5+ units)? You can find this data in the ​“Housing Unit Types” chart above.

The impact of short-term rentals

Short term rentals (found on platforms like Airbnb and VRBO) and seasonal rentals have a big impact on the cost and availability of rental housing in many Litchfield County towns. If you are interested, go on one of the short-term rental platforms and type in your town to see what is listed. Many of our towns have lake communities with summer seasonal rentals priced at 10 times what an annual monthly rental might cost. Again, these units are not available for year around rental, and are not affordable.

Production of new housing has been slow

In most Litchfield County towns production of new housing units has been slow over the last 10 years and a vast majority of the new units created are 1-unit homes (mainly single family 3+ bedroom homes on large lots). We need more 2-unit, 3-4 unit, and 5+ unit housing options. These options are more affordable by nature than single family homes.

Older Homes are more expensive to maintain

Because we’re not increasing the supply of new housing in our communities, what we have available is an old and aging housing stock. More than 30% of homes in Litchfield County were built before 1950. Look at the chart below and see what percentage of homes in your town are more than 70 years old. Many of these homes are expensive to heat, cool and maintain. Some also have asbestos, mold, or lead paint that is expensive to remediate.

Housing Cost Burdened Households

A household is considered housing cost burdened if it is spending more than 30% of its income on housing costs. When households have to spend this much of their income on housing costs, they often don’t have enough left over to pay for all their other essential needs including food, gas, clothing, healthcare, childcare, etc. Households that have to spend 50% of their income on housing costs are considered severely housing cost burdened. These households are often forced to make difficult decisions at the end of each month about whether to fill a prescription, get the car fixed, buy food, or pay the rent or mortgage. In Litchfield County we have 9,254 households that are severely housing cost burdened. How many severely housing cost burdened households are in your town?

The chart below shows how many households are cost burdened and severely cost burdened in your town within certain income ranges. Typically we see the highest number of households that are severely housing cost burdened earning below 50% of the area median income.

Access to Home Ownership

Home ownership is out of reach for many households in Litchfield County. There is a large and growing gap in the majority of our towns between the sales price a household at 80% of the area median income could afford ($250,000) and the median sales prices of homes. The highest gap is in the Town of Washington, CT where the median priced home sold in 2023 was $801,000 more than a household at 80% of the area median income could afford.

We also know that the overall supply of homes for sale has been declining while prices have been rising for the few homes on the market. Four municipalities in Litchfield County do have median sales prices that are slightly less than a household at 80% of the area median income could afford- Colebrook, North Canaan, Torrington, and Winchester. With the exception of Colebrook, these towns had town median incomes that were lower than the county median income. So these towns still have affordability challenges for people who would like to move to a different housing option within their town.

Impact of second homes and weekend homes

The market for second homes or weekend homes, mainly from the NYC area, has an impact on both the availability and affordability of housing in many of our region’s towns. Homes that are used seasonally or on weekends are not available to year-round residents. This strains the already limited supply of homes in our area. Many of the households that are purchasing second homes or weekend homes are bringing their incomes from higher income earning areas like NYC, driving prices up beyond the costs that households earning their incomes in our region can afford. We have also seen many lower cost homes purchased as second homes and renovated/added onto and resold a few years later for double or more of their original price. How many of the homes in your town are second homes?

Workforce Housing Needs

Our region had approximately 61,000 jobs in 2022. The largest number of these jobs are in the health care and social assistance sector. Followed by retail and manufacturing. Many employers have expressed a need for housing opportunities that are attractive and affordable for the workforce they are trying to recruit and retain.

The average annual pay for people working in Litchfield County is less than 80% of the area median income (AMI) for a single person household. If it was a single head of household supporting children, it would put them well below 80% AMI. The data presented here shows the limited the number of homes dedicated to remaining affordable for our workforce and that affordable housing IS workforce housing.

Since we don’t have many options that our workforce can afford, many of them are forced to commute unsustainable distances to get to work. This is unsustainable for the worker who has to pay for gas, a reliable car, (lacking public transportation options), and spend that much time commuting each day. It is also unsustainable to the community because a 45 minute commute to work means an hour and a half of fossil fuel emissions are being added to the air each day and added traffic congestion on the region’s main roadways. The chart below shows how many of the residents in your town commute more than 45 minutes to their jobs. In Litchfield County as a whole almost 18,000 residents are commuting more than 45 minutes to work.

Need for Dedicated Affordable Housing

Avoiding housing cost burden is most difficult for households under 80% of the area median income. This is why State and federal programs intended to create affordable housing are focused on these households. The state keeps a list of how many housing units each town has that are dedicated to remaining affordable to households in this income range. This list is also referred to as the ​“Affordable Housing Appeals List” which is required under State Statute 8-30g. We use the term ​“dedicated” because these units are owned, managed, and/or provided funding by an entity that assures that the households who live there do not have to pay more than 30% of their income on housing costs.

When housing is not ​“dedicated” to remaining affordable, rents can increase beyond affordable rates and homes can be priced out of reach of many households. They can also be turned into Airbnb’s or weekend homes which do nothing to help us house the residents who live and work here year around.

Connecticut municipalities with less than 10% of their housing stock dedicated affordable are subject to the Affordable Housing Land Use Appeals Procedure, widely known as ​“Section 8-30g.””. In towns that have not met that 10% threshold, a town’s decision to deny a zoning permit to a development that includes affordable housing may be appealed. There is no State requirement for towns to reach the 10% threshold and reaching it does not imply that the town has satisfied its resident’s housing needs.

In Litchfield County we have 31,388 households that earn under 80% of the area median income (AMI) but only 4,686 housing units dedicated to remaining affordable to these households. Many of these dedicated affordable units are restricted to seniors or disabled only.

Increasing number of households

Some people wonder why we need more housing if we have a declining population. There are three main reasons for this. One is that although our overall population in Litchfield County declined slightly between the 2010 Census and the 2020 Census (by 2.5%), the number of households actually grew slightly by 1.1%, or 862 households. This is because the number of people per household has been shrinking so we end up needing more housing even though there are fewer people.

The second reason we need more housing (and programs to rehabilitate existing homes) is that technically the ​“useful life” of a home is 30 or 40 years. After that time it costs (either all at once or over time) almost as much as the original house or building cost to do all the needed repairs and updates. You’ll see in the chart above how many of the homes in your town and in our region were built before 1950. Many of our residents cannot afford to keep up with home repairs and maintenance.

The third reason is that Census data does not count the number of people that live here seasonally or on weekends. In some towns in Litchfield County the population almost doubles in the summer or on weekends. These households are also using housing that would otherwise be available to year around residents.

The supply of new homes (see ​“Production of New Housing” section above) - and the supply of the types of homes we need for an aging population- has not been keeping up with this increase in the number of households in our region let alone accommodating the housing needs of the workforce our region’s employers are trying to attract to the region.

Our Aging Population

See the ​“Our Aging Population” section above to see how the number of senior households has increased and how this affects the types of homes we need.

Race

Litchfield County is not racially diverse. A majority of towns in the region are over 90% white. Litchfield County as a whole is 86.5% white while Connecticut as a whole is 62% white.

The racial composition of communities across the country did not happen by chance. It is the result of accumulated policy decisions over multiple generations that legalized and allowed market forces to produce segregated neighborhoods. While the 1968 Fair Housing Act was intended to protect individuals and families from discriminatory housing practices, barriers to fair housing continue to persist today.

Many Litchfield County residents appreciate the value of both economic and racial diversity within their community and are concerned that the high and rising cost of housing is a barrier to diversity.