Debate Portrays Housing As Politics Problem

More emergency beds. A zoning overhaul. A freeze on taxes. A move away from being the ​“methadone capital of Connecticut.”

The four Democrats seeking New Haven’s top elected office pitched those proposals when pressed during a mayoral candidate forum on what to do about the city’s lack of affordable housing and rising tide of homelessness.

The in-person forum took place Sunday evening in the auditorium of Davis Street School at 65 Davis St. in Upper Westville.

Hosted by the Democratic Ward Committee co-chairs from Wards 25, 26, 27, and 30 and moderated by Board of Alders Majority Leader and Amity/Westville Alder Richard Furlow, the event saw more than 150 New Haveners from across the city fill the room to learn more about the four people running in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary for mayor.

Those include two-term incumbent Mayor Justin Elicker, retired former police sergeant and former Beaver Hills Alder Shafiq Abdussabur, Hartford inspector general and former New Haven legal aid lawyer Liam Brennan, and ex-McKinsey consultant Tom Goldenberg.

Sunday’s forum was lively, civil, and rich in ideas. (A video recording of the whole event appears at the bottom of this article.)

It gave attendees a chance to meet face to face with all four Democrats running for mayor for the first time in person this election season, both to question them on their platforms and just to get to know them as people.

And, in a testament to just how well-organized the event was, it wrapped up in under two hours. 

That was no mean feat given that there were four candidates on stage answering questions, seven committee co-chairs asking questions and keeping time, one moderator overseeing it all, and one independent mayoral candidate, Wendy Hamilton, in the audience section disrupting the proceedings before she was politely asked, and agreed, to leave.

The event organizers’ questions hit on topics ranging from gun violence to student absenteeism to city department head residency requirements and mayoral term lengths.

The prompt that sparked some of the thorniest responses — in terms of the depth of the challenges at hand and the differences in personality, leadership style, and policy priority among the candidates — concerned housing. 

That question came from Iva Johnson, the Democratic Ward Committee co-chair for West Rock/West Hills’ Ward 30.

“Homelessness, mental health, and a lack of affordable housing is a multifaceted problem,” Johnson said. ​“What’s a realistic solution for New Haven?”

Brennan: "Homelessness Is A Housing Issue"

Brennan got to go first.

Just as he’s done throughout his campaign, and as he did throughout Sunday’s forum, Brennan sought to bring the question back to root causes. For him, the root cause most in need of digging up is that there are simply not enough places to live in New Haven.

“Homelessness, at its fundamental level, is a housing issue,” he said. ​“Please go home and remember that: Homelessness is a housing issue.”

Following the key ideas (and book title) of an influential data-focused work of recent affordable housing scholarship, Brennan said that cities with high rates of addiction and mental health challenges do not also necessarily have high rates of homelessness. 

“Where are there higher rates of homelessness? Where there are hot real estate markets. That’s where homelessness skyrockets,” he said. And New Haven is just such a city — with a vacancy rate of around 1.5 percent, he said, which might as well be 0.

“The biggest way we can take on the issue of homelessness in this city is to address the affordability crisis that we have in housing,” Brennan said. 

He praised the advocacy work of the Room for All Coalition, which legal aid helped convened when he worked for that organization and which includes formerly homeless people, homelessness service providers, tenants rights activists, and others all pushing for affordable housing-friendly policies. 

He also stressed that ​“we have to think through the way that our government allows for the creation of housing, or does not.” Most of New Haven’s zoning code dates back decades to the era of Urban Renewal, ​“which was a mistake at the time, that destroyed many neighborhoods, and that still imposes the rules that govern the construction of housing in our town. We need to take that on whole scale. We need to make it possible to build more housing that is cheaper.”

The Urban Renewal-era zoning code ​“was wrong then. It is wrong today. It needs to change.”

Goldenberg: Tax Freeze Promise

Up next, Goldenberg decried a lack of state and federal investment in housing assistance programs that leads to a thousands-long waitlist for such subsidies as Housing Choice Vouchers. 

“I will advocate to the state to fix our housing assistance program to make it easier for” people to receive such help, he promised.

Then he turned his focus closer to home to bash the current mayor for overseeing a consistent rise in taxes each year of his three years in office so far.

“Of course, we need to, where appropriate, have more density,” he said, ​“but also the tax increases have been hurting homeowners and renters. We’ve had increase year after year after year.”

Goldenberg said that three neighborhoods in particular — Fair Haven, Newhallville, and the Hill, all of which are majority Black and Hispanic — saw property taxes go up by 40 percent on average over the last two years. That’s thanks to rising property values per the state-mandated twice-a-decade citywide revaluation, as well as the mayor’s proposed and alders’ approved budgets.

“What do we think that’s going to do?” Goldenberg asked. ​“It’s going to push people out of their homes. It’s going to push rent up.”

“That’s why,” he concluded, ​“I’m committee to freezing taxes.”

Elicker: "These Things Take Work"

During his time at the mic, Elicker described Johnson’s affordable housing-focused question as ​“one of the defining questions that we are struggling with now and are going to be struggling with for many years to come.”

“There is no one approach” to addressing such a problem, he said. Which is why the city is working on a number of fronts in a ​“comprehensive” way to make sure New Haveners have affordable places to live and aren’t sleeping on the street.

First, he said, ​“we’re focused on expanding [the number of] emergency housing beds.” He said his administration has ​“painstakingly worked with the state to try to get more funding” for such beds. 

He also pointed to the creation of ​“all kinds of resources” — including the Elm City COMPASS program, the mobile Power in a Shower, and ​“drop-in centers where people can show up for the day, get a shower, wash their clothing, and get additional resources” — as all designed to help those most at the margins. 

Second, he said, the city has worked and must continue to work to make sure that people with very low incomes but who are not necessarily homeless have access ​“deeply affordable housing.”

“We have brought over 900 renovated and new units of affordable and deeply affordable housing [online] over the past three years,” Elicker said. ​“We have another 900 in the pipeline.” The housing authority’s Valley Street Townhouses are on the cusp of a complete rebuild and renovation. As is McConaughy Terrace. New deed-restricted affordable housing is currently being built in Dixwell by Beulah Heights.

Turning to Brennan, Elicker agreed that ​“the long-term approach” to increasing density is indeed to change the city’s zoning code. ​“We’re working on a proposal to increase density downtown.” The city’s also working on rezoning Long Wharf. ​“And in the long term, yes, we’re redesigning zoning across the city.”

“These things take work,” the mayor concluded. ​“They don’t just take statements. We’re committed to doing this work and have a lot of this work” already.

Abdussabur: "Methadone Capital Of CT?"

Unlike the three candidates who spoke before him, Abdussabur focused his response to Johnson’s question more on mental health and addiction than on taxes, rent, and housing supply.

“This administration has been making New Haven a satellite for needle exchanges” and ​“methadone” and ​“all this other stuff,” Abdussabur said. 

“I’ve been in the homeless camps,” he said. ​“I’ve been in the mud, in my shoes, over there in the park, seeing people living on pallets.”

Yes, not all of the people living outdoors or otherwise unsheltered in this city are drug users, Abdussabur said. They’re also not all from New Haven. And not everyone living without a home in New Haven ended up on the street because of a problem of affordability.

“Some of them have mental health issues,” he said. ​“Some of them have medical issues. This issue is not exclusively about affordable housing. This is about: Are we trying to make New Haven a methadone capital of Connecticut? We already have what you see with the APT Foundation” on Congress Avenue. He described the drug use and occasional acts of violence that have taken place outside of that clinic, which is across the street from a public elementary and middle school.

“Let’s get it together here,” he implored. ​“This is about looking at the city holistically.”

Which is why he’s already dropped a homelessness policy platform, he continued. ​“We need a homeless response center. We need to open up an office of homeless” initiatives in the mayor’s office. ​“We need to…”

But before Abdussabur could get out another proposal, Ward 26 Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair and timekeeper for the night Sharon Jones let him know that his two minutes to respond were up. Abdussabur put the mic down, walked back to his seat at the table with the three other Democratic mayoral candidates, and waited for the next question to arrive.

“Wow,” Ward 15 Democratic Ward Committee Co-Chair Janis Underwood said as she took a breath before moving on to the forum’s next question. ​“That’s a hot topic.”

Click on the video below to watch Sunday’s candidate forum in full.