In 2017, the Connecticut legislature handed a regulation that required cities to submit inexpensive housing plans each 5 years.
By the point the deadline got here round on June 1, 2022, fewer than half of the state’s municipalities had completed their plans. Information up to date in January present that 36 cities have nonetheless not submitted their plans.
By making the plans, cities had been supposed to offer proof that they had been engaged on an issue that specialists say has escalated to a disaster: the shortage of inexpensive housing in Connecticut.
Connecticut lacks almost 90,000 items of housing which can be inexpensive and accessible to its lowest-income renters, in line with the most recent estimates from the Nationwide Low Earnings Housing Coalition.
The 2023 estimates present that the issue is worsening. Final 12 months’s numbers confirmed an absence of nearer to 86,000 items.
The legislature is contemplating a number of measures to extend the inventory, together with a few statewide zoning reform measures. Consultants have mentioned that a lot of the issue in Connecticut stems from restrictive native zoning ordinances, whereas many native leaders and legislators say statewide reforms impose a one-size-fits-all answer and dilute native management.
