4 Affordable Housing Projects Get $5.4M State Boost

This level of help for affordable housing is great, more would be better.

This is great news for the Region, as well as the city, but we need more. I would like to see more ADUs, granny flats, garage conversions, 3rd floor conversions and non-confirming/sliver lot tiny/small residential builds with the appropriate health and safety measures taken. And what about rehabbing or building on empty commercial and industrial buildings and sites for a decent percentage of the building reserved for affordable and low income and supportive housing units mixed in with visual/performing artist work-live spaces, first floor retail, food and beverage, entertainment, office use, grocery store, service providers and other commercial or non-polluting/not noisy light industrial uses? There are lots of buildings zoned for industrial or commercial use zones that have been sitting and rotting empty for years because the demand for those uses has left the country, never mind the State, and could be rezoned as mixed use and could revitalize their neighborhoods. I'd also love to see small/tiny 1-2 bedroom bungalow/cottage/ranch starter homes on lots under 1/4 acre like our country built during the Great Depression and right after WWII for returning veterans and also decommissioned shipping container homes for small non-conforming lots to help reduce materials costs and prevent risk from fires. With the use of solar panels for power on their roof and heating/cooling wall hung units and tiny patios or gardens or decks with privacy walls around the property, they could provide decent affordable housing for veterans, chronic homeless people, and people whose anxiety issues make it difficult for them to live comfortably in multi unit complexes with all the noise and people. There is so much that could be creatively done to create more affordable housing and reduce homelessness with zoning changes. Maybe we could engage Habitat For Humanity and the Yale School Of Architecture to design low cost quality units for non-conforming lots with reducing homeowner expenses.

Instead of trying to get market rate developers to include 5, 10, 20 percent affordable units in otherwise market rate developments, these types of developments are planned as including high percentages of deeply affordable units from the beginning. The developers have the staff and partnerships in place to handle supportive services to residents and the enormous paperwork burden of annual re-certifications of tenant income.

The idea that market rate developers can include these 25 percent AMI and even 60 percent AMI units in larger new construction buildings is just an ill conceived political ploy to influence the narrative around these issues. Let's just get real about who does what.

Affordable housing developers make more affordable housing. Market rate developers make more market rate units.

The million dollar question to me is "why don't we demand that affordable housing developers include at least x percent of market rate units in their new projects?" And the answer is that no one will pay market rents to be neighbors with 25 percent AMI tenants. aside from some intrepid do-gooders trying to prove a point, no one wants to pay 2000 for a two bedroom where their neighbors are living off $700 per month and food stamps.

Let's just be honest about these issues. And let's keep in mind that new haven has, in every way, far exceeded any standards for having affordable quality housing stock. We have that part covered. Now we need Hamden and west haven and north haven and east haven to get to their 10 percent threshold and above to alleviate some of new Haven's burden. Because providing affordable housing is certainly not inexpensive.

@Ben: and Woodbridge! Especially Woodbridge.

As to your third paragraph, I personally don't care what my neighbors pay in rent compared to what I pay as long as it's equitable and the hallways get cleaned, snow gets shoveled, etc. I don't think I am unique in feeling this way, which is what you seem to suggest. If we accept as fact that our state is segregated (which I do), then we have to commit to building exactly this kind of housing, where folks who have different journeys but a common goal can live in the same neighborhoods and reap all the benefits of having good neighbors.

To Heather's point, I live in the forgotten industrial area just east of i91, and it is RIPE for the kind of development she suggests we need. Every building but mine is an abandoned industrial and would make great mixed use housing/retail and create a real "neighborhood" where right now there is just empty space.

@BeccaLovesApizza

I was talking about income, not rent. I don't care what my neighbors pay in rent each month but people living off a $742 month disability check and middle-class working people have very different lives that are often incompatible.

@Ben: I don't think those lives are inherently incompatible just because they are different. Why should they be?

Ben Trachten- I was and will be one of those low income neighbors. I worked food service, retail, daycare, nanny, and customers service jobs all my life and made just over minimum wage. Now I'm retired on disability with Social Security income. I've had a job in New Haven or the Greater New Haven area since I was 15, not counting my earlier jobs as a babysitter or newspaper deliverer. I'm a great neighbor, quiet, thoughtful, helpful and friendly with my neighbors. Most of my coworkers have also been hardworking, responsible, good tenants who worked hard to pay their bills in time, and retired/will retire with mostly SS income and if they're lucky a little 401K savings that won't do much to cover all their bills until they die. Essential/front line workers are mostly good hardworking people. My mother was a single mother with no college degree on welfare with three kids who moved to New Haven after her divorce and my deadbeat dad disappeared, so she could access the city's social services. She worked jobs as a maid and in food service to keep us fed and sheltered while she was on Welfare and attending college. She pulled herself up through hard work and graduated with a Masters degree under the Carter Administration welfare college program and eventually was able pay off her student loans and buy herself a home. She has always been a great tenant, a great neighbor and everyone she knows who went through similar hardships was also a great tenant and neighbor. Your stereotypes of the working poor are unfounded in the reality of me, my family, and almost everyone I knew growing up in the city, my classmates, my coworkers, my friends, my family, my family's friends, and so on and so forth. Stop the ghettoization of subsidized housing complexes and support scatter site units to support the poor. When you concentrate poverty housing, you stigmatize poor people and stereotype them.