Laura Glesby Photo
Karen DuBois-Walton: "Every night I go to bed concerned" about the housing crisis.
Pre-approve certain building plans. Eliminate parking minimums. Support single-room apartments. Implement a land tax.
The Housing Authority of New Haven and its nonprofit affiliates recommended those city-level policies and others while delivering a message to City Hall: when it comes to the housing crisis, “we can’t count on the state.”
Elm City Communities, an umbrella group including the city’s public housing agency and its nonprofit development and property management arms, released a new report on affordable housing titled “Breaking Ground” on Monday morning.
The report culminates a series of community conversations hosted by Elm City Communities (ECC) on the affordable housing crisis, strategizing with NYU Furman Center’s Housing Solutions Lab, and research by ECC’s policy director Will Viederman. (Read the full report here.)
At a press conference outside the agency’s headquarters at 360 Orange St. on Monday, ECC President Karen DuBois-Walton said that though ECC is New Haven’s largest provider of deeply affordable housing, there are 30,000 households on the waitlist for the public housing apartments and federal Housing Choice Vouchers that the Housing Authority administers.
“Every night, I go to bed concerned about the thousands of voucher holders who are looking for quality housing in a place of their choice, a unit that they can afford, and who are struggling,” said DuBois Walton. “Probably even more concerning are the families we are not reaching” — families who are homeless or living in unsafe or unaffordable housing.
While much of ECC’s policy advocacy has related to statewide initiatives to develop more affordable housing in neighboring towns, the Breaking Ground report focuses on zoning reforms and other policies that the city of New Haven can enact on its own.
“Our state legislature and our governor failed to pass meaningful reforms” on housing this year, Viederman said. “We can’t count on the state. It’s not enough [for New Haven] to say, ‘It’s not our fault and our neighbors should act.’ ”
New Haven's vacancy rate and rent growth as charted in the report.
The report concludes that the housing affordability crisis is rooted in a shortage of homes in New Haven and Connecticut at large, which has led to “historic lows,” as Viederman put it, in the city’s vacancy rate — the number of unoccupied housing units in the city.
That low vacancy rate, the report argues, has led to higher rents. Using a combination of Census data and Zillow, ECC found that just after New Haven’s vacancy rate dropped to 3 percent in 2021, rent grew by 13 percent.
According to the report, more young adults ages 18 to 34 moved out of their parents’ homes or larger roommate households during the pandemic. Viederman said he did not think this trend was necessarily sparked by changes in local universities, surmising instead that young adults from New Haven and its surrounding towns are more interested in starting independent households here than before.
“It’s a growing, dynamic city,” he said, “and there are not enough homes here.”
ECC’s research found that New Haven needs to build 8,400 more homes by 2030 to ameliorate the housing crisis.
To put that goal in perspective: according to Viederman, the city saw 5,700 new housing units built in the last three decades.
Upzoning, ADU Expansion, Parking Minimums
Will Viederman: "It’s not enough to say, 'It’s not our fault and our neighbors should act.'"
The “Breaking Ground” report proposes that New Haven allow developments to bypass the typical zoning and City Plan regulatory processes if they align with pre-approved building plans for particular kinds of lots.
The report notes that planning and zoning applications, as well as “delays from neighborhood opposition,” add to the costs associated with development.
ECC cited South Bend, Indiana, as a city that has pre-approved certain building designs — an approach it states would “encourage smaller and more local developers to pursue the kinds of projects needed in the city.”
Mayor Justin Elicker, whose administration first received ECC’s recommendations along with the public on Monday, reacted to this proposal in a phone interview: “I think it’s an interesting concept that is very much worth exploring.”
He added, “Many of the properties that are available are unique in their location and size of parcel, and so I think we’d have to think through what a pre-approved building might be so as not to unnecessarily impact the wishes of a neighborhood that different parcels are in.”
ECC is also recommending a handful of reforms to the city’s zoning code as well.
For instance, it calls on the city to eliminate requirements for new housing developments to provide a certain number of off-street parking spaces
Parking spaces are a common reason why developers seek special exceptions from the Board of Zoning Appeals. They are also a frequent concern raised at community meetings about local developments.
ECC argues in the report that parking minimums are contributing to a dearth of housing for local residents by making it more expensive to build a given number of housing units. The report notes that Bridgeport and Hartford have both eliminated parking minimums.
The report also calls on the city to allow single-room occupancy units (SROs) — housing units consisting of one room and often involving communal bathroom or kitchen spaces, like in a rooming house — in more areas of the city.
SROs are currently permitted in RH‑2, BA, and BC zones; the report calls on the city to allow more SROs, since those housing units tend to have significantly more affordable rents.
Other zoning reforms called for in the report include:
• “Upzoning,” or increasing the number of housing units permitted, areas that currently only allow for single-family homes. The report recommends changing RS zones to RM zones in order to do just that, and cites a national history of using single-family zoning to discriminate against Black households and perpetuate segregation.
• Getting rid of maximum unit density restrictions, without necessarily adjusting building size limits in the zoning code. This would allow for houses and buildings to create more apartments.
• Lowering the minimum lot size for a residential development, which would allow buildings to go up in smaller areas.
• Allowing Accessory Dwelling Units to be built as of right not only on owner-occupied properties (as the city currently permits) but on properties owned by an offsite landlord.
Elicker said he supports many of these zoning changes. He pointed to the city’s proposal to rezone the Long Wharf neighborhood, which if approved would institute a density minimum and a parking maximum (rather than the other way around.)
He added that he also plans to propose removing the requirement that ADUs be constructed on owner-occupied lots, noting that the homeowner requirement was a compromise with alders for an initial rollout of the policy.
“It’s also very important to understand that we can’t — nor should we — just do things unilaterally in the city,” Elicker said. “We have to do a lot of community engagement around zoning changes that will impact neighborhoods around the city.”
He anticipated that some of the ECC proposals, like eliminating parking minimums and allowing for more ADUs, would prompt concerns from residents.
At the same time, at the press conference, DuBois-Walton stressed that making progress against the housing shortage is pressing and necessary.
“New Haven’s housing crisis is severe. New Haven’s housing crisis is wide-ranging,” she said. “It requires urgency of action.”
Land Tax Lauded
From the report: "The Scale of The Problem."
The report also advocates for replacing the property tax system with a land value tax system, which would institute taxes on landowners based on “the use potential of the land.”
Land tax advocates argue that a tax system based on the property values discourages new buildings on vacant land, since the landowner would face a rise in property taxes as a result of their development.
The report argues that a property tax “encourages speculators to profit off collective housing shortages rather than investing in their own property.”
Elicker expressed support for this proposal as well, but he noted that the city needs permission from the state in order to implement a land tax.
“Let’s do that together with Elm City Communities and other entities in the city. But we’d have to lobby the state to change the laws under which municipalities across the state have to follow,” he said.
Some of the housing shortage may certainly be blamed on local universities, particularly Yale, which has increased enrollment but limited dorm construction. Last I checked, 17% Yale College students lived off-campus. The Graduate and Professional schools have grown tremendously, and even more, Yale stipends are extremely generous, allowing about $1/month for rent, which means students sharing an apartment can afford a $2K place with only one other roommate. Prior to the current union pressure, grad students often shared with four or five others. If Yale built more housing, or reduced its enrollment, there would be more housing for permanent residents.
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/10/students-raise-concerns-about-off-campus-living-cost-amid-yale-college-housing-shortage/