By Chris Powell
Will Governor Lamont and the new session of the General Assembly do much about the state’s severe shortage of housing? The governor and legislators say they want to bring down the state’s high cost of living and make the state more affordable, and housing expense may be the biggest part of the problem.
Connecticut’s social promotion makes public education a costly fraud
Hartford schools obstruct investigation of graduate’s illiteracy
Connecticut mustn’t worry about illegal immigrants until they kill
For years the housing issue in Connecticut has been mainly a controversy over exclusive zoning in the suburbs and a state law that allows developers of less-expensive housing to go to court to get around such zoning. Opponents of the law insist on preserving local control to maintain the “character” of suburban and rural towns. By “character” they mean in large part the exclusion of the poor.
Unjust as such opposition seems in general, it arises from fair concerns. For the poor can impose much expense on a municipality and diminish its quality of life. They usually consume more in government services than they pay in taxes, and their children are often neglected, commit crime, and weaken schools.
Poverty is no fun, and having turned most of Connecticut’s cities into poverty factories, government’s failure has cautioned suburbs not to let more poor people in.
But to exclude the poor, towns end up zoning out their own middle-class children starting out in life, as well as their own parents needing to downsize in retirement.
While so much more housing is needed, there is a big risk in pushing too much of it into the suburbs: land-gobbling sprawl and the need to build expensive infrastructure like roads, schools, sewers, and sewage-treatment facilities. Such expenses worsen the zoning controversy.
The political left may keep advocating zoning overrides in pursuit of social justice, but moderate Democratic legislators have been reluctant to risk offending their constituents with more poor people, and most Republican legislators proclaim devotion to local control.
As he considers a third term, the governor also seems to want to avoid the zoning issue. He notes his administration has been financing or otherwise facilitating much housing construction, if not enough.
But if more zoning overrides are a dead end politically, there is still plenty of opportunity for more housing in Connecticut, exactly where less expensive housing — that is, multi-family housing — would be best placed: in the cities and older inner suburbs. For these places have many abandoned industrial and commercial sites as well as utility lines and public transportation already in place. These locations could also accommodate the businesses that would be needed by new or revived neighborhoods — shops, supermarkets, restaurants, professional offices, and such.
City government in New Haven is making good progress in facilitating new housing in the downtown area. Hartford and Bridgeport are striving to catch up. Bridgeport, which once styled itself the industrial capital of Connecticut, has much abandoned factory property and run-down housing that could use redevelopment.
Getting state and city governments to work together with developers isn’t always easy. While city residents aren’t as snobbish as suburbanites, they too can resent change in their neighborhoods, and, living among so much poverty already, they are right not to want more nearby.
That’s why new housing shouldn’t be too affordable. Most should be aimed at people who can support themselves and who could become homeowners with government-subsidized mortgages, just as government-subsidized mortgages helped build the middle class in the suburbs decades ago, helping millions of people become middle-class with equity in their homes.
Catholic philosophers of old argued that the best way to extend prosperity and protect property is to ensure that everyone owns some. Indeed, it has been done.
If only the United States could develop a housing policy more like Singapore’s, where the government directly builds housing and finances homeownership for all who want it and where, as a result of this policy and high educational standards — not the social promotion destroying education in the United States — society is integrated and productive, enjoys a high standard of living, and suffers little poverty and crime.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
Chris Powell column 
“If only the United States could develop a housing policy more like Singapore’s, where the government directly builds housing and finances home ownership for all who want it and where, as a result of this policy and high educational standards — not the social promotion destroying education in the United States — society is integrated and productive, enjoys a high standard of living, and suffers little poverty and crime.”
Good idea.
LikeLike