By Chris Powell
News organizations in Connecticut lately have turned their attention to the shortage of housing in the state, which is especially oppressive to the poor as rents rise not only because of the shortage but also because of inflation. People increasingly are confined in small, uncomfortable, and even unsanitary apartments in unsafe neighborhoods.
Exclusive zoning is part of the problem. So is the failure of federal housing subsidies for the poor — Section 8 vouchers — to keep up with inflation. Irresponsible landlords are part of the problem too.
But the news organizations always fail to acknowledge and explore the biggest part of the housing problem, even when it stares them in the face, as it did recently in the pages of the Waterbury Republican-American and The Day of New London.
That is, the biggest part of the housing problem is the irresponsibility of hapless tenants themselves.
The Republican-American related the experience of a single woman with six children who wants to leave her three-bedroom apartment in Waterbury for a safer neighborhood somewhere but can’t afford to because her Section 8 voucher won’t pay enough.
The Day featured a single woman with four children living in a two-bedroom trailer in Groton. She needs a larger home but long has been out of work and will take a job only if it has flexible hours allowing her to look after her kids.
Of course no husbands or boyfriends sharing responsibility for the children could be found in the news reports. Instead these reports, like all such reports, seemed to assume that children are as accidental as the weather and their expense cannot be anticipated.
The reports also seemed to assume that people who live in the decent way — first acquiring an education and job skills, then establishing themselves financially, and then choosing a reliable partner before undertaking the responsibility of children — are chumps who should pay extra for those who live irresponsibly.
Yes, government must take responsibility for the children whose parents fail to. But government should examine how much its methods of support for such kids is facilitating irresponsibility and indeed destroying the family, as indicated by the spectacular increase in child neglect in the last half century.
For the country’s sake as well as their own, the chumps should wise up. For housing is ever more expensive for the chumps as well, and the more the country subsidizes irresponsibility, the more irresponsibility it will get. Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim seems to have been forgotten: The first duty of a citizen is to pull his own weight.
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HOW TO REVIVE HARTFORD: Government in Connecticut doesn’t seem to have much of a housing policy besides leaving builders to deal with demand and zoning. That policy isn’t accomplishing much. But Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin sees the opportunity to do much more without displacing or aggravating anyone.
Hartford’s downtown office buildings are being emptied by the transfer of office work to work at home via the internet, and Bronin notes that space in those buildings might be converted to housing. For some years now Hartford city government has recognized that housing is what downtown needs most to become a vibrant neighborhood, and, encouraged by city government, apartments have been going up, if slowly.
But amenities like supermarkets and household services downtown are still lacking. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Getting markets is hard without the housing, and getting housing is hard without the markets.
The answer, Bronin says, may be to get mixed use out of the office buildings where businesses are giving up space — reconfiguring them with shops at street level and offices and housing upstairs. Supplemented with several schools nearby, this could produce a vibrant, middle-class neighborhood where people could live without cars, walking or taking a short bus ride to whatever they need in daily life.
Because of the multiplicity of building ownership, fulfilling such design will be a challenge, requiring great coordination. But the whole state would benefit from such new housing in downtown Hartford, and Connecticut might be delighted to discover that there can be more to city life than drug dealing, panhandlers, and shootings.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.
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Chris Powell column 