By Chris Powell
Congratulations to Danbury. A Superior Court judge has ruled that the city was within its rights and zoning law to prevent a social-service organization, Stamford-based Pacific House, from operating a vacant motel as a shelter for the homeless.
Pacific House was operating the motel under one of Governor Lamont’s emergency orders during the recent virus epidemic. The organization’s idea was to convert the motel to contain 66 double-occupancy rooms so that the hundred or so people estimated to be homeless in Danbury in the winter would have somewhere to sleep safely and be nudged toward rehabilitation. But the order has expired, zoning law is back in force, and the people living in Pacific House’s former motel have been evicted.
The city has opened a much smaller shelter downtown but it isn’t likely to come close to bringing all local homeless people inside during the winter.
Opponents of the motel’s conversion to a shelter argue that other towns in the Danbury area should open shelters to do their share. Suburbs do like confining social problems in the cities. But the homeless typically need more help than a roof over their heads. They usually need medical, psychiatric, and other services not readily available outside cities, and they don’t have transportation.
Besides, even if a suburb was willing to do its share, it would not likely have a vacant residential facility like the one now wasting away in Danbury. Housing in Connecticut is scarcer than ever and homelessness is rising again.
Worse, in 2021 state government gave Pacific House $4.6 million precisely to purchase the motel for use as a shelter. Danbury now has thwarted the state’s expensively manifested interest.
Will the governor and General Assembly preside haplessly over this disaster?
Being unable to use the former motel, Pacific House might be willing to give it to state government. Indeed, state government should insist on taking ownership of the property it paid for, and if state government owned the property directly, it presumably could trump municipal zoning by leasing it back to Pacific House for use as a shelter. Or state government might seek bids for converting the former hotel to regular housing and then leasing the building to a developer. After all, the property was built to provide housing and originally was zoned for that purpose.
Of course returning the former motel to use as any kind of housing might upset some neighbors and cause controversy. But state government long has been under the administration of a party that prattles about helping the poor even as poverty in the state worsens, and after many years of Republican rule Danbury just elected its own Democratic administration. So the city now provides a test of Democratic sincerity.
It’s Christmas and this time, in Connecticut, there is plenty of room at the inn. But where is the political will to unlock the door?
AN EPIDEMIC OF SELF-PITY: Now that the virus epidemic is over, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy says the country is suffering an epidemic of loneliness. He wants the federal government to look into it, starting by establishing in the White House an office of social connection policy.
Certainly the country is coming apart in many ways. But loneliness? Other elected officials, including Murphy’s Senate colleague from Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, say the country is suffering an epidemic of social media. Simple privacy is becoming a luxury.
The country’s worsening despair and alienation are more likely matters of declining living standards as real incomes fall under the pressure of the inflation Murphy and the rest of Congress long have been voting for.
In any case does the country really need the government to try to cure loneliness when civic groups and government itself are crying out for volunteers, hospitals and nursing homes are full of patients who would welcome a visitor, bars remain open until 1 and sometimes 2 in the morning, and internet chat rooms are open around the clock?
Anyone lonely in such a world may be suffering most from self-pity — and in the richest country in the world.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
Conceivably it would have been best for Danbury to acquire the property directly by eminent domain and keep the state out of the loop, but eminent domain wasn’t the solution for New London and Danbury may not have been able to afford a purchase. Getting the homeless into shelter is the priority, as you say. If a Danbury-state government-Pacific shell game is an answer, I’m all for it.
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