Welcome To ​“Vision 2034”

I was pleased at the size and diversity of the audience.

The current Comp Plan is quite good as far as it goes. But it really does not address equity, which will be a focus of the new plan.

The current plan has a very limited impact on actual development decisions. In large part, this is because the zoning ordinance was not updated to reflect the Comp Plan. The ordinance needs a complete re-write, which will take time and money. But there are many straightforward changes that can and should be made before the Comp Plan is adopted next year.

How were residents notified of this meeting?

the problem with these rewrites is no real consideration of opposing views, no matter how near or far they are from the director. they take the "if you don't like it, leave(we're better off without you)" attitude, leaving hald the the populace disillusioned.

Nobody heard of this on our side of town.

Is there somewhere we should be checking to see when these meetings occur? I'm happy to see the size of this turnout and would have liked to attend as well. With the understanding that it may have been my fault for missing the notification.

Matt, I cant speak for the department or the city. But in previous discussions Ive had with relevant officials, Ive been told that a comprehensive re-write of the ordinance could cost $1 million. The department staff are swamped with development applications (a good thing), which means the city would need to hire consultants. And everyone wants extensive public participation, which also costs money. State law requires periodic revision of the Comp. Plan. This is not the case for the zoning ordinance.

Dennis, that is a critical question. Certainly it means socio-economic as well as race/ethnicity equity. For a bunch of reasons, LULUs (locally unwanted land uses) are largely located in lower income, majority non-white neighborhoods. Drug treatment facilities, homeless shelters, smoke shops, etc. are very sparse in my neighborhood (East Rock). Zoning is only one reason for this, but it is that city can cntrol.

CY2, the city, alders, and Community Management Teams notified folks of the meeting. You do not get 100+ people to a meeting at night, in the middle of Winter, without ample notice.

Heather, there will LOTS more meetings, at the city and neighborhood level.

Mr.HinkyDink, the conversation at the meeting had all sorts of opposing views. They included varying views on gentrification and the desirability of increased density and promoting alternatives to cars.

Neighbor, I saw people I knew from Beaver Hills, Downtown, East Rock, Edgewood, Fair Haven, Fair Haven Heights, the Hill, Westville, and Wooster Square. Im sure other neighborhoods were represented.

Regular Person, here is website for the process https://newhavenvision2034.com/. (Laura, I did not write down the URL last night. it took me some work to find it.)

SIDEWALKS!
Great sidewalks on every street in every neighborhood would enhance pedestrian movement and make an incontrovertible statement that this is a great city to live in.

Dave, Im all for wider sidewalks.But under state law, zoning changes apply prospectively. They would apply to undeveloped parcels (not too many of those in the city), or to buildings that are demolished and replaced by new buildings.

City Plan chief Laura Brown Thursday night: Help us chart city's future.

HA HA!!! Now I see why you did not answer my Question I ask you last Night When I said New Haven gentrifying and what are you going to do about it.You said I would not answer the question at this time.Now I see why.You are City Plan chief and part of the machine.People wake up.This plan is not for the poor and working poor.

3/5ths Glad you attended. What do you suggest the "poor and working poor" do to be included in the plan and reap guaranteed outcomes?

ThreeFifths, I regularly disagree with you in these pages. But my friend Laura Brown did give your question short shrift. To be fair, she had said that it is critical that the city's efforts to promote development do not displace long-term residents. The challenge is how to do this. Here are some fairly simple ideas.

Curator, we've had this conversation before.The ADA requires new and substantially modified sidewalks to meet those standards. Same thing if the adjoining street is being repaved. And benches and other street furniture must located in a way that does not create barriers for people with disabilities.

But the law does not require other existing sidewalks to be brought up to these standards. You know better than the rest of us that existing sidewalks that do not meet ADA standards are ubiquitous.

More relevant to the meeting, zoning has nothing to do with sidewalks in front of existing buildings.

Dennis, that is a critical question. Certainly it means socio-economic as well as race/ethnicity equity. For a bunch of reasons, LULUs (locally unwanted land uses) are largely located in lower income, majority non-white neighborhoods. Drug treatment facilities, homeless shelters, smoke shops, etc. are very sparse in my neighborhood (East Rock). Zoning is only one reason for this, but it is that city can control.

Equity among whom? Among people from within New Haven? I mean, other than East Rock and Yale there is no wealth in this city.

By the way, we have lots of liquor stores and loitering in Westville, lots of smoke shops, a marijuana dispensary, and an entire homeless motel district. Please tell Liecker we have our share of equity if this is the definition.

Theres a fantastic mansion in the Prospect Hill neighborhood that is for sale that would make a great subsidized supportive housing complex. Maybe that could bring some relief for the people of New Haven who are being displaced by rising rents from gentrification.
And displacement doesnt have to happen directly for it to impact the neighborhood. Building 1 gets remodeled or built new by a developer, and the rents are mostly market rate (except for a few city required token AMI rent units that only lower middle class professionals can afford,) so the landlord at building 2 next door or a few doors down remodels with white and grey builders grade interiors, and jacks up the rent as soon as they can evict the tenants at the end of their lease. Then building 3s landlord who cant afford to pay rising maintenance, taxes or afford to remodel a 100+ year old home because they are a middle class retiree, sells their building to a speculator or investor or to a megalandlord, who then remodels or tears down and builds a new market rate unit development, and then the sales prices and rents prices continue to rise as more and more developers and landlords remodel and raise rents in the neighborhood, which attracts more higher end buyers and tenants, all of which raises the property values, which raises taxes, which means that landlords with all sorts of properties have to raise rents to afford the higher taxes. And so on and so forth.
A rising tide raises all boats, and those without the financial ability to fix up the holes in their boats, have to sell their their boats to someone who can fix them, and they have to move away from the water, and those without boats or the ability to buy a boat, or to move to dry land, will only be able to tread water for so long before they drown.
Thats in a nutshell, is what is happening in our little city.
And there are some people in denial as to what the poorest among us are telling us is happening to them.

ThreeFifths, to give short shrift to a question is to answer it superficially.

Curator, the ADA standards apply to newly-built sidewalks, regardless of who pays for them. But the USDOT/FHWA only pay for a fraction of the sidewalks.

Dennis, the average household income, and likely wealth, is slightly higher in Westville than in East Rock. The average household income is only slightly lower in the East Shore than East Rock. In East Rock, 16% of households had incomes below the poverty level, according to the 2020 Census. In Westville and the East Shore, the figures are 9% and 3%. East Rock is clearly better off than most New Haven neighborhoods. But its average household income is below that of the NH region as a whole.

Will Vision 2034 come with streamlined regulations and a good hard look at how many employees we truly need in City Hall?

Will Vision 2034 institute zero-based budgeting, so that our taxes wont be the among the highest in the State? The high property tax can be handled by megalandlords and large businesses, but kills anyone who wants to start their own business or own their own property.

Dennis, the data are from the Census Bureau. Theyve been in the business a while.

You are right that the East Rock census tracts include Cedar Hill, which affects the numbers. But years ago I found that the poverty rate for SoHu, where I live, was not much lower than East Rock as a whole. I doubt that has changed.

I have been involved with my CMT over 20 years. During that time, I have met only a handful of undergrads in the neighborhood. I suspect undergrads are more common in Downtown and Dwight, closer to Old Campus.

The grad students here do affect the average household income calculation. But not the poverty rate. The current minimum salary for Yale graduate student workers is a bit over $48,000. That is more than double the federal poverty level for a one- or two-person household.

There are poor households in Westville as well as East Rock. And middle-income households in all of the citys neighborhoods.

ThreeFifths, we are agreeing. Quick, someone take a picture. 🥸

MTR, you are right about the American Community Survey. Small sample size means wider confidence intervals. But statistically, it is unlikely that Westvilles actual median household income is substantially below East Rocks. (FWIW, I TAd Statistics in grad school.) And the poverty rates I cited were from the decennial census, not ACS. The response rate to the census, while not 100%, is very high and the data are reliable. The share of East Rocks households that are poor is higher than Westvilles. The proportion is much lower in the East Shore.

EastWest, the statute (CGS Sec. 8-23) that mandates the creation and revision of the Comp Plan also specifies what it covers. It must cover many things related to land use, and may cover many others. ZBB or city staffing are not on either list. The Plan can include a capital budget, but that is not what you are talking about.

I was actually around was when ZBB was developed. Jimmy Carter was the first official to use it systematically in the public sector. While Wikipedia is hardly Gospel, one sentence in its entry on ZBB rings true.But in its classic form - begin all budget evaluations from zero - ZBB is as unworkable now as it ever was. The city has contractual obligations that it can not walk away short of declaring bankruptcy. The obligations include debt service on bonds, union contracts, and pension obligations.These obligations constitute a substantial part of the citys budget. A city cannot file for bankruptcy without its states authorization. For economic and political reasons, this is not going to happen in CT, cf. Bridgeport, Hartford, Waterbury, and West Haven.

Dennis, there certainly are low-income households in Westville. But proportionately fewer than in East Rock. The rents are higher here, although not nearly as much as you think. But the homeownership rate is more than twice as high in Westville than East Rock. (St. Ronan Street is Prospect Hill, not East Rock.)

My point is not that Westville is North Haven, much less Greenwich. Both Westville and East Rock are city neighborhoods. But neither has proportionately as many LULUs as other city neighborhoods. As part of its equity focus, the Comp Plan needs to address the fact that lower-income neighborhoods have been dumped on for many years.

Dennis, as a progressive, I am all in favor of having the suburbs do more, in terms of affordable housing, dealing with substance abuse, etc.

As an erstwhile Chicagoan, I am a political pragmatist. About, two thirds of CT residents are suburbanites. With laudable exceptions, they and their elected officials do not see these issues as their problem.

For the foreseeable future, New Haven will host more than its share of subsidized housing, addiction treatment facilities, etc. Even though I live in a better-off neighborhood, I believe the city needs to address the fact that historically LULUs have disproportionately sited in poor neighborhoods. The "fair share" concept should apply locally as well as regionally.