2 Housing Tax Breaks Approved

The planned new four-story complex will comprise a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom apartments. Three will be reserved for tenants making up to 80 percent AMI, or $72,080 for a two-person household; 48 for tenants making up to 60 percent AMI, or $54,060 for two people; and 13 for tenants making up to 50 percent AMI, or $45,050 for two people.

Again.Snake Oil and Three Card being sold.

Of course - more tax breaks for the well heeled and well connected. Little people? Cough up more dough out of your stressed family budgets to fund the fat City Hall dreams of the elites. It never ends.

“The planned new four-story complex will comprise a mix of one, two, and three-bedroom apartments. Three will be reserved for tenants making up to 80 percent AMI, or $72,080 for a two-person household; 48 for tenants making up to 60 percent AMI, or $54,060 for two people; and 13 for tenants making up to 50 percent AMI, or $45,050 for two people.”

• Yes, but I’m sure the 3 and 2 bedroom units won’t be the 50% AMI, only the 1 BR and studios. We need truly affordable units for the average New Haven Median Income front line and essential worker single mother or father or grandparent with kids who needs 2-3 bedrooms.
  That is where our housing is truly lacking. So many of these AMI units are for lower middle class wages because the AMI is based on the median income for New Haven County, and the wealthier communities incomes get figured into that. But the average front line and essential workers in New Haven earn much less.
  And many of the lower AMI units are the lesser number of bedrooms units, the smaller square footage units, but most of the lower income families needing housing have children, or are taking care of grandchildren, or nieces or nephews, or aging parents or other extended or multigenerational family members that need to live with them. They need the larger apartments with more bedrooms.

The West Ridge apartments on Stone St are very worthy of the tax breaks, they are much needed for the elderly and disabled and are truly affordable. We need more projects like this.

I'm surprised to hear so much animosity toward these projects. All I hear is the need for affordable housing in New Haven and when a truly affordable development is approved y'all cry foul? Is there no pleasing the mob?

"The developer also plans to knock down four single-family houses and relocate and renovate a fifth single-family house on Stone Street to make way for the new apartment complex. The developer already owns all of the properties in question."

While I think both decisions are good policy, I do not think there is legal authority for the abatement for the West Ridge development. The issue is state law. CGS § 8-215 allows municipalities to abate taxes on “housing solely for low and moderate income individuals or families”. I am aware of no other statute authorizing abatements for such properties. Obviously, I may be mistaken.

The section uses the world “solely” three times. Apartment buildings, unlike condos, are taxed by building rather than by individual units. Landlords do not get separate tax bills for each unit in their buildings. The buildings here are not solely for low and moderate income folks. The statute does not provide for partial abatements for mixed income buildings, even though this would make sense. When the statute was adopted in 1967, the practice was to segregate lower-income folks. It took more than a decade to change this profoundly bad practice. Unfortunately, CGS § 8-215 was not amended correspondingly.

In contrast, all of the units at the Monarch will be for low- and moderate income tenants.

Three-Fifths, while most of the units are targeted to moderate income folks (sometimes called the working poor), 26 at West Ridge will be reserved for households below 30% of AMI, i.e. low-income households.

Heather, under the inclusionary zoning ordinance, the mix of affordable units (one bedroom, two bedroom, etc.) must reflect the mix of the development as a whole. The Board of Alders clearly wrote the ordinance to prevent all/most of the affordable units being studios.

Patricia, good questions. Unfortunately, I see no interest on the Board of Alders to address them.

This clearly becomes a town/city state wide issue. There needs to be a state ordinance that going forward demands that property developers must set aside 50% of their units for low income - those making less than $40,000 annually for two people and $50,000 for thee or more. These units must be 2 and 3 bedroom. One bedroom at $28,000 cap for single person/ income which is part time work generally.. Also a big problem lies with people that have lost jobs during the pandemic and have ruined their credit as well as anyone that might have a criminal record. These people have families and are in incredible hardship. They are the ones living in hotels cars and on the streets being turned down by landlords. They need to be given a chance. These kind of units would allow for people to get on their feet, and when they can prove an higher income , they can then advance to the other 50% of the building.

BhuShu, an affordable rent for a household making $40,000 is $1,000/month (using the 30% of income standard). Newly-built two bedroom apartments here typically rent for twice that or more. I have no problem giving developers a haircut, but that would be more like a scalping.

This narrative of the greedy developer is ignorant. Development is a business and businesses make money.

Construction costs are fairly standard so when we discuss affordable housing we are discussing subsidies. Without subsidies there is no affordable housing. Municipalities can offer increased density or tax breaks in trade for affordable units or affordable developers can employ the laborious and dubious affordable offerings from the federal government. This is how affordable housing is subsidized. There is no world where a developer takes more risk and loses money to build affordable housing. That is a childish notion.

Urbancarpenter, what you say is basically true. But we are only looking at part of the story. There is housing that is “naturally affordable” for moderate income folks, e,g. a $1,000/month apartment for a household making $40,000 per year. We lose some of this housing every year. While some of this loss is unavoidable, I think it would be substantially cheaper to keep these apartments from falling out of the market due to obsolescence than building new affordable units. (We need to do that too, but it is wicked expensive).

Unfortunately, there is very little existing housing that is affordable to low income households without substantial. And the amount of subsidy need is inversely proportional to incme. A single parent working a full-time minimum wage job can afford about $600/month. This is about half the median (average) rent in town and one-third of market rents for newly constructed apartments.

urbancarpenter
Jan 9, 2023 11:56 am
This narrative of the greedy developer is ignorant. Development is a business and businesses make money.

How about the greedy developers are major political donors?The root of the problem is these greedy developers see these buildings as money and don’t think about the way their projects affect the people who live in thses buildings are going up.The question that needs to be ask is.Why Aren’t We not Building more Low and Middle Income Housing which is more need it.And it is not just the only the greedy developers.Add in,The Greedy funders, lenders, syndicators, contractors, consultants, and policy makers.Building more middle-income housing would make a very big difference to the millions of working-class and middle-income families who are currently cost burdened.But the problem is these greedy developers can not make the profit off of building low and working-class and middle-income building s for families.