Laura Glesby Photo
Karen DuBois-Walton at Tuesday's board meeting: Looking beyond borders.
For the first time, the Housing Authority of New Haven is providing site-based housing vouchers outside of the Elm City itself, covering 40 low-income apartments in the town of Branford.
As housing advocates continue to push for a state bill that would allow local public housing agencies to build apartments in nearby towns, the Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) is testing an alternative approach to funding affordable housing out of town: using the federal “Section 8” Housing Choice Voucher program, which the agency administers on a local level.
The authority Board of Commissioners Tuesday afternoon voted unanimously to allocate 40 Housing Choice Vouchers toward Parkside Village, a long-awaited apartment complex in Branford. The first phase of the complex has been built but is not yet occupied.
The vouchers cover a portion of rent so that tenants pay no more than 30 percent of their income on housing. They will be site-based, meaning that they will remain at Parkside Village available to future tenants after a tenant moves out.
Commissioners approved a 20-year contract for these vouchers effective immediately, with the option of renewing them for an additional 20 years in the future.
“I deeply believe in people having choice with where they want to live,” said Karen DuBois-Walton, who heads HANH and its umbrella organization, Elm City Communities.
The Branford vouchers will allow people on New Haven’s Elm City Communities housing waitlist the option of moving to a “quieter, suburban setting,” she said.
The contract is with Parkside Village developer Beacon Communities, which has partnered with HANH on Monterey Place and the Edith B. Johnson Towers in Dixwell.
Parkside Village was constructed in 1974 as a public housing complex for elderly and disabled tenants. Confronting aging facilities, the Branford Housing Authority spent a decade attempting to rebuild the complex and open up eligibility to families of all ages.
The effort faced fierce opposition from neighbors who heard about the prospect of living near low-income income people and interpreted that to mean “drug addicts” and “riffraff” who would ruin the town’s “quaintness.”
According to the state Department of Housing, 33.37 percent of New Haven’s housing units had a government subsidy or deed restriction ensuring they would be “affordable” in 2022 — compared to just 3.19 percent in Branford. In sheer numbers, New Haven had 41 times the number of guaranteed “affordable” housing than Branford, despite being less than five times the size of the town.
Meanwhile, Census data indicates that in 2022, 87 percent of Branford residents were white.
After surviving legal challenges, “Phase I” of a new Parkside Village open to all ages is on the brink of opening with HANH as a partner.
According to DuBois-Walton, the Branford Housing Authority sought to partner with Elm City Communities because the federal government has shifted away from funding traditional public housing developments (as opposed to vouchers). HANH has access to significantly more vouchers than does Branford’s.
HANH’s 40 vouchers will cover only some of the 67 total housing units planned from both phases of the Parkside Village reconstruction.
Half of the 40 vouchers will be awarded first to residents of the original Parkside Village public housing complex. The other half will go directly to people on the Elm City Communities waitlist. When the 20 original residents move on from living at Parkside, others on the Elm City Communities waitlist will be eligible for those apartments.
Meanwhile, Elm City Communities has continued to advocate for an expanded housing authority jurisdiction bill and other efforts at the state level to promote affordable housing in the suburbs.
“We’re getting a little frustrated with the pace of legislative change,” DuBois-Walton said.
She said that she hopes the Branford project will serve as a “test” for the kind of suburban subsidized housing that state housing advocates are hoping to expand.
“We want to make our case that this works,” she said.
Enterprise Builders, Inc.
Enterprise Builders, Inc., posted this photo update of the project on Feb. 1.
It seems like every other month we get to read about another victory by Karen and Elm City Communities where others have failed. We are very fortunate to be home to ECC and KDW.