Elicker: YNHH Should Do More On Housing

The city should collaborate with Yale-New Haven Health to create a hospital-sponsored housing fund with the understanding that homelessness is not just a housing issue, but a public health issue as well.

That’s one of the policy priorities included in mayoral challenger Justin Elicker’s newly released ​“Housing for All” platform.

The release is Elicker’s third such detailed policy platform since launching his bid to unseat incumbent Mayor Toni Harp, with the first three sets of proposals focusing on education, the economy, and good government.

Elicker, a former East Rock/Cedar Hill alder and 2013 mayoral candidate, will face off against Harp in the Democratic primary on Sept. 10.

The new housing platform comes out just a week after Elicker said on WNHH’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program that one of the issues he has heard the most from New Haveners about as he doorknocks throughout the city is that of affordable housing.

He’s not alone among candidates for both mayor and alder who have put housing concerns at the center of their campaigns. In her her nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic Town Convention earlier this summer, Mayor Harp singled out the creation and slated development of 2,000 units of affordable housing during her time in office as one of her administration’s proudest accomplishments. One of the early mayoral candidate forums pivoted around how the city should crack down on slumlords.

In his Housing for All platform, Elicker commits to following many of the recommendations made by the Affordable Housing Task Force.

He that he will support the passage of an inclusionary zoning policy that would require developers set aside a certain percentage of units in new buildings at affordable rates, though he does not indicate what percentage of units should be set aside and what should qualify as affordable. The City Plan department has proposed including a 10 percent affordable housing mandate in a new rezoning project that would define affordable rents as those that require 30 percent or less of the annual income of people earning 60 percent of the area median income, or around $58,000 per year.

He says that he will support the legalization of ​“accessory dwelling units” and the strict enforcement of $100 per day fines against landlords who keep their properties in unsafe and illegal conditions.

In a section dedicated to homelessness, Elicker argues that YNHH should follow the model of the Boston Medical Center hospital complex and donate money specifically towards housing.

“Many low-income, high-cost patients at Yale-New Haven struggle with homelessness and poor housing conditions,” the platform reads. ​“Other hospitals around the country, like the Boston Medical Center, are investing in housing funds that address the housing instability and quality issues that drive high levels of uncompensated care. This saves money in the health system in the long-run and addresses the housing crisis.”

Later on in his housing policy platform, Elicker calls on YNHH to invest in safe and healthy housing throughout the city as a specific public health strategy to reduce asthma rates in New Haven, which are some of the highest in the country.

Read Elicker’s full housing platform below.

Elicker’s Full Platform On Housing

We All Need a Home: Housing for the Elm City

While knocking on thousands of doors and collecting thousands of signatures, one issue I’ve heard about again and again is that we have to do more to address the very real need for high-quality, safe and available affordable housing in our community. While growth downtown is strong, it can be increasingly challenging for families to afford stable housing. Too many New Haveners live on the street or in a shelter. Out-of-town investors often gobble up homes in neighborhoods before first-time homeowners have a chance. And irresponsible landlords abuse tenants, deteriorate neighborhoods, and create conditions that can lead to tenants’ injury or death. Together, we can respond to these calls and embrace new housing strategies that create a stronger, more equitable City.

​A Regional Approach to Issues including Housing

While there are many policies we can implement today in New Haven, much of the work around many of the challenges we face, including housing, requires regional collaboration, State buy-in and changes in State laws. While there is the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities and the South Central Regional Council of Governments, these entities comprise of a mix of cities and towns that don’t share a strong coordinated agenda that benefits major cities. There is no formal coalition of major cities in Connecticut. I plan to create a Coalition of Major Cities and believe that New Haven is in a position to take a leadership effort in such a coalition to advocate for issues that particularly impact major cities. This would include everything from a coordinated legislative agenda to lobby for State changes around the tax structure, restructuring PILOT (Payment In-Lieu of Taxes) funding and giving municipalities more revenue tools to help municipalities manage the severe financial challenges that lie ahead. The legislative agenda for the Coalition would also include other initiatives to address issues that disproportionately impact large municipalities such as changing State laws to ensure the suburbs share more in the responsibility for caring for the homeless, providing affordable housing, provide meaningful drug treatment and care and other services that currently mostly large cities provide but suburbs do not. By working together with larger municipalities such as Hartford, Waterbury, New London, Bridgeport and others, we can implement a coordinated approach to implement legislative changes that up until now have been politically challenging to accomplish.​

Affordable Housing for New Haveners

Housing is not affordable for everyone in our City. In fact, 41 percent of all households in New Haven are housing insecure, meaning that more than 30 percent of their household income ultimately is spent on rent and utilities. We need to preserve and expand the stock of affordable housing in our City, ensuring that when growth happens, it benefits all. Here’s how:

• Support Inclusionary Zoning policies that ensure that when market-rate housing is built, there are affordable units available, too. Under such a program, for new larger development projects, a set proportion of units would be set aside for working-class and low-income individuals.

• Make it easier for homeowners to provide affordable housing. Accessory dwelling units are ways that homeowners can rent available space to a young family or maybe an elderly family member looking to age in place. We should support these approaches.

• We need to double down on a commitment to house the poorest among us, who face the greatest challenges in finding stable, affordable housing. I will work with the Connecticut Housing Finance Agency to advance mixed-income housing developments that provide sufficient units so that very low-income people can have access to truly affordable housing.

• We need to make sure we legalize affordable approaches to building homes. As the Affordable Housing Task Force found, many potential empty lots that could be sites for new housing in our community face unnecessary bureaucratic burdens because of antiquated zoning and lot size rules. Let’s make it cheaper to build sustainable housing in this City so that more neighbors can have housing that allows them to thrive.

Tackling the Homelessness Crisis

We can make real steps to end chronic homelessness in our community and prevent new homelessness. At the same time, we can reduce the real costs that homelessness imposes on our health system and City. Here is what I would do to address homelessness:

• Continue to invest in Housing First policies to get more chronically homeless individuals into stable housing. Proven successful in places like New Orleans, a housing first system was able to decrease the City’s homeless population by 90 percent in recent years by following this model.

• For many in this City, the loss of a job or an unexpected expense could mean the loss of a home. Partner with the State to invest in more Rapid Rehousing vouchers that ensure people facing housing insecurity are able to stay in their homes when disaster strikes. Such an approach not only provides stability for families, it also saves the system money. It is much cheaper to keep people in homes than address the fallout when they lose them. That’s why the State needs to step in more strongly. Such an approach would help to address the crisis of eviction. As documented by Matthew Desmond in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Evicted, evictions can lead to homelessness and other crises for families. We need to work with tenants and landlords to identify ways that families can stay in homes during temporary income disruptions.

• Similarly, homelessness is an area where Yale-New Haven Hospital can play a central role. Many low-income, high-cost patients at Yale-New Haven struggle with homelessness and poor housing conditions. Other hospitals around the country, like the Boston Medical Center, are investing in housing funds that address the housing instability and quality issues that drive high levels of uncompensated care. This saves money in the health system in the long-run and addresses the housing crisis.

• We also need to improve conditions at the Grand Avenue Shelter. Too many individuals remain on the streets because of the unacceptable conditions there. The City should use the $1 million it currently provides to fund emergency shelters to require improvements in the safety and quality of the providers offering services.

Fighting Bad Landlords and Addressing Housing Quality

When I ran in 2013, I squared my sights on some of the worst landlords in the City. Six years later, bad landlords continue to wreak havoc on neighborhoods. Landlords who do not follow the code put their tenants in harm’s way. That can mean deadly fires or debilitating exposure to toxic lead. Bad landlords erode our tax base and low-quality housing deteriorates neighborhoods. Working together, we can address this issue through these proven approaches:

• Combat lead. I have made lead a centerpiece of the campaign. And the reason for that is simple. Serious study after study has found that child exposure to lead has profound permanent impacts on a child’s development. Students who have untreated exposure are more likely to have challenges in school and fall into dangerous behavior. Meanwhile, the Harp Administration has loosened its lead inspection standards, increasing exposure of New Haven children to dangerous lead levels well beyond what national standards recommend. New Haven’s children deserve the strongest protections that City Hall can and should require.

As mayor, I will commit to properly staffing our lead inspection team, will make sure landlords address lead issues, and ensure that our City’s policies align with nationally recognized health standards. The mark of a just society is what we do for our children.

• Improve code enforcement. We can and should use our code enforcement resources to force the worst landlords in the City to improve conditions. The most abusive landlords are well-known to the City and tenants alike, but we need to more aggressively enforce the rules. The failure to address these issues in time has led to tragedies, like the fire on West Street. We need to better use the tools that we have to take sustained action against problem properties.

• Go after vacant and blighted homes. Make use of our City’s $100/day blight fines to force landlords who keep their properties in disrepair or vacant to improve conditions or face increased costs. This increased revenue can be used to reinvest in our communities. We should take particular aim at properties owned by banks after foreclosure, as the banks are notoriously disrespectful to neighborhoods in their treatment of properties.

• Support low-cost home improvements. Many local homeowners are challenged to fix up their homes. Additionally, landlords don’t always have a strong economic incentive to fix up their properties. The City should develop policies that help property owners to make improvements to the property that will benefit tenants and neighbors. Philadelphia is piloting a low-interest loan program for homeowners and New Haven should investigate such a policy that allows everyone to improve conditions and contribute to the success of neighborhoods. And we should implement tax deferrals to incentivize property owners to improve and beautify their properties without being ​“punished” by an immediate increase in their taxes.

• Address poor housing conditions’ impact on health. Just as homelessness has large implications for medical costs, poor housing conditions do, too. Beyond the serious issues caused by lead, New Haven also has one of the highest asthma rates in the country, which is exacerbated by old housing stock and poor household conditions. Hospitals around the country, most successfully in Camden, New Jersey, have found that tackling housing conditions for patients with chronic conditions like asthma can improve outcomes and substantially reduce costs to the system. That is just another way that Yale-New Haven can partner with the City to address our shared challenges.

Expanding Homeownership Opportunities

Most Americans’ largest source of wealth is their home. However, years of racial discrimination in housing markets and then disproportionate impact of the burst of the housing bubble in the Great Recession have created substantial wealth inequality in our country and City. New Haven was one of the cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. Here are some ways that we can address the issue.

• Giving First-time Homeowners a fair shot. Across the City, neighborhoods are seeing the local effects of a nationwide trend: out-of-town property investors buying up multiple properties in the City and keeping first-time homebuyers from entering the market. We need to do what we can as a City to prioritize first-time local homebuyers. Increased homeownership helps to stabilize lower-income neighborhoods. The City can take a role by ensuring that tax foreclosure sales and sales from City and State-owned properties go to people who agree to live and invest in this City, not far-flung investors looking to make a quick profit.

• In that vein, New Haven should create an effective land bank that can acquire foreclosed, municipal, and abandoned properties, and work with residents and non-profits to build new homeowner and rental housing. Cities like Newburgh, NY have found this method effective and Governor Lamont just signed legislation to create land banks in Connecticut. This land bank will help us better use our land to grow our City and uplift residents.

• Hold the line on property taxes. One of the biggest challenges for working-class homeowners in New Haven is the level of property tax in our City. That’s why I’ve made fiscal responsibility a centerpiece of my campaign. Check out our platform on managing the City’s financial problems here.

• Pursue a City homebuyers program. Both Yale and Yale-New Haven have built out successful homebuyers programs that support individuals moving into New Haven. We can work toward a similar approach for City employees. There are many benefits to increasing the number of New Haven residents working as New Haven police officers, public works employees, firefighters and so on. And while we legally can’t require municipal employees to live in our City, we can give municipal employees incentives to live here — such as help purchasing a home.