This three-part series of articles summarizes “November Special Session Public Act 25-1,” Connecticut’s new housing law, commonly referred to as HB 8002. This first of three pieces reviews what the Act does not do; its most beneficial provisions (most of which are not directly related to housing production); and two important study committees from which the Act requires reports in early 2026. Both have potential to improve or obstruct affordable housing.  Part Two, tomorrow, will discuss the new Council on Housing Development and the Act’s housing programs: parking rules; transit-oriented communities; conversions of commercial and mixed-use zones to middle housing; priority housing development zones; Department of Housing-led developments; and tweaks to § 8-30g’s moratorium rules.   Part Three will address the Act’s new regime of municipal and regional housing growth plans; and opportunities for developers and the General Assembly in 2026. As we explain below, overall, the Act has many good provisions, but also too many sections that are confusing, and some that conflict with existing law and will likely be dysfunctional in practice. What the act does not do The Act does not tinker with, much less overhaul, the core problem of our land-use system:  169 towns, each exercising the broad discretionary powers of General Statutes § 8-2, the Zoning Enabling Act.  In September 2024, Tim Hollister, a co-author of this article, wrote about how our system preserves the parochial status quo of exclusionary regulation and economic segregation.  He stated that the legislature should recognize how towns are using their land-use authority to prevent lower-cost housing production; devise a list of powers and procedures to be purged or pruned; and then summon the political will to revise the state-local balance of delegated authority.  The new Act does little to address this goal, and in fact creates more roadblocks to progress.  The Act refers to financial incentives to amend zoning regulations but those “carrots” are not yet spelled out, and the Act otherwise contains no zoning regulation revision mandates.  There are no bold initiatives similar to what other states have adopted in recent years. Continuing a statewide trend years in the making, the Act reconfirms a central role for General Statutes § 8-30g, the affordable housing statute, not only by leaving it substantively unchanged but also by adopting, in the new housing programs, several measures that utilize standards taken from § 8-30g, such as specifying when land-use commissions must demonstrate a public health or safety basis for denying permits (the § 8-30g standard), rather than the traditional standard of “health, safety, and the general welfare.”  The new Act recognizes that § 8-30g is now embedded in dozens of local housing programs and is here to stay. The Act incentivizes municipalities to work with the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority (CMDA), created in 2019, funded in 2024, and now up-and-running.  That program encourages development agreements that will commit towns to affordable and multi-family development, mainly in transit-oriented locations.  However, the Act creates several new housing programs that will ostensibly compete and maybe conflict with the CMDA program, and with little explanation as to how the revised package of programs should work together. A non-transparent process that led to poor drafting Simply put, the new Act is replete with provisions that are confusing at best and others that, while relatively clear, display misunderstandings of existing Connecticut land-use law and establish new standards and procedures that will conflict with existing statutes, caselaw, and practice. How did this happen? After the proposed text of the new Act was introduced at the November 2025 special session as House Bill 8002 (the bill vetoed by the Gov, Ned Lamont in June 2025 was House Bill 5002), the proponents tried to justify its immediate adoption, without public hearings or time for vetting the text, by explaining that the legislature had held numerous hearings on an array of housing issues during the 2025 regular session.  But this fact does not justify House Bill 8002 being made public on November 7 and then, under an “emergency certification,” voted on just days later. Though no one in leadership has said so, the apparent emergency was avoiding giving opponents of the bill time to pick at it line by line, section by section.  Also, H.B. 8002, 53 sections and 107 pages, was not introduced as an amendment to H.B. 5002 but as a brand new document, such that comparing H.B. 8002 to H.B. 5002, much less in five days, was essentially impossible.   So, the new Act did not receive any public hearings or review of its wording.  As a result, the Act contains errors, misstatements, and several provisions that conflict with existing law and create impossible standards. We intend no disrespect to the drafters.  They had a tough job.  Our point is that the final product could have been vastly improved with time for scrutiny. Program notes The good parts of the Act are mainly the holdovers from H.B. 5002 –provisions that were not the reasons for the governor’s June 2025 veto.  These provisions recognize that our affordable housing crisis has many facets and requires multiple approaches. As you are reading this, most of the Act’s provisions are already in effect, adopted “from passage” on November 26 or effective January 1, 2026. Effective from passage are the sections creating the new Council on Housing Development; committees to study the § 8-30g Ten Percent List and sewer/wastewater policies; a pilot program of mobile showers and laundry facilities for the homeless; and priority access to environmental remediation funding for municipalities that adopt zoning regulations allowing conversion of commercial building to residential use.  The only provisions delayed to July 1, 2026 are revisions to General Statutes § 8-2s regarding conversion of land zoned commercial or mixed-use to “transit community middle housing,” and the new standards for parking in residential developments. On the other hand, a defining feature of the new Act is its extended timelines, in the form of far-out or unstated deadlines.  Future guidance on multiple matters will be issued by the Office of Policy and Management (OPM) and the Department of Housing (DOH).  The all-important housing growth plans will not be filed until 2028 and 2029. Another notable point is the dispersion of authority over housing development to OPM instead of DOH.  It is hard to discern the basis for this shift, but going forward, OPM will be more of a major player in affordable housing development than previously.  This feature is also curious because, of course, a central theme of the governor’s office in 2025 was that municipalities, not the state, should “take the lead” in planning and zoning for affordable housing. In fact, while the Act does not force municipalities to adopt zoning regulations, overall the Act creates pervasive state agency oversight of the supposedly voluntary local and regional programs it introduces. When reviewing our summaries below, the reader should pay attention to several provisions that address just “housing,” not specifically subsidized or affordable housing.  This may be a subtle shift forced by opponents of the prior bill’s tight focus on affordable units. The Act contains 53 sections, but because most are now in effect and being codified into the General Statutes, we have included only minimal references to sections and subsections. Finally, please bear in mind the variety of audiences we are addressing in these articles.  Many in local government and the development community need to understand the at-times-eyewatering procedural details, so we have tried to strike a balance between being complete and accurate but not going overboard with minutia. Changes to existing housing programs The Act makes these improvements to existing programs: For the homeless population, creating a two-year pilot program of mobile vans with showers and health care service; and a permanent ban on “hostile architecture,” meaning physical obstacles that prevent the homeless from sitting or resting (Sections 23 and 26); Modifying of rental assistance and voucher programs, including allowing non-profit entities to administer such programs and expanding the geographic areas where households use financial assistance (Section 28, 29); Additional protections of renters and tenants in the eviction process (Sections 37-39); Requiring about 30 cities and towns with a population between 15,000 and 25,000 to establish a fair rent commission or join a multi-town or regional commission (Section 35); Extending existing protection of mobile manufactured homes and mobile home parks from zoning regulations that treat them differently from single-family, multi-family, and cluster housing, to homes narrower than 22 feet wide, provided that the home is built in compliance with federal safety standards (Section 18); Banning the use of certain formulas and algorithms to calculate or set rents (Section 32); Requiring additional reporting by municipal housing authorities about such matters as rental prices in relation to household income (Section 44); and Authorizing the State Attorney General’s office to enforce the state’s fair housing and anti-discrimination laws in the same manner as the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) (Section 31). Financial programs The Act’s primary financial incentive is a grants-in-aid program administered by OPM to assist municipalities with costs of housing-related construction and infrastructure (Section 15).  However, no amount of funding has been specified, and OPM will issue details at some unspecified later time.  To be eligible for grants, a municipality must be in compliance with its housing growth plan or its regional council plan (to be explained in Part Three of this series); have in place a development agreement with the Connecticut Municipal Development Authority; or “meet additional criteria” to be developed by OPM. Every good Act needs a “sleeper” provision, a section that seems innocuous but could have outsized impact.  The Act adds to the public school construction cost reimbursement program a five percentage point increase if the municipality is in compliance with its municipal or regional housing growth plan; has qualified as a transit-oriented community under the Act; or has entered into a development agreement with the CMDA.  If the school construction cost is, for example, $50 million, five percent could be a substantial financial incentive (Section 46). In addition, the Act contains: A modest income tax credit, based on household income limits, for first-time home buyers (Sections 1-3); Expansion of CHFA’s Smart Rate Pilot Interest Rate Reduction Program, to provide additional help to mortgage borrowers (Section 36); Additional funds for regional planning agencies to help them provide technical help with planning, development, stormwater control, and flood management (Section 30); Direction to the DOH to establish an Affordable Housing Real Estate Investment Trust pilot program, to provide grants to municipalities with a population of 130,000 to 140,000, which apparently means New Haven and Stamford (Section 43); Authorization to OPM to provide grants to regional councils of government to support public transit, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure (Section 25); Direction to the DOH to establish a program by which union pension funds may “coinvest” in affordable housing development and thereby “create employment opportunities in the construction industry” (Section 34); and DOH also is given new authority to make grants to municipalities of less than 50,000 for development of middle housing (Section 27). Land use procedural reform The Act eliminates the two-thirds “supermajority vote” provision that kicks in if adjacent property owners file a so-called “protest petition” to oppose a zone change application (these petitions are an antiquated exclusionary zoning tool), in favor of a simple majority vote (as is otherwise now required of all zone change applications), and an increase in the minimum amount of land abutting the zone change that the protest petitioners must own in order to file, from 20 to 50 percent (Section 24).   The Act also clarifies which municipal body can vote to opt out of the 2021 standards for accessory apartments (Section 22). Further study The Act establishes two committees that will file reports in the 2026 legislative session and could be very important to affordable housing.  The first is an interagency task force to study the state’s wastewater and sewer programs and the powers of municipal sewer commissions (Section 33).  Sewers are a well-established and frequently-used mechanism to prevent multi-family and affordable housing development, so this group has an opportunity to curb misuse of sewers to block housing.  Second is a committee to study the § 8-30g “Ten Percent List,” by which DOH counts each municipality’s total affordable housing stock and exempts from § 8-30g those with more than ten percent affordable (Section 42).  It seems inevitable that every municipality that wants to be shielded from § 8-30g application without having to produce any new housing will descend on this committee and argue that the current system has “failed” and/or is unfair. The committee should resist this pressure.  The Ten Percent List was established in the original 1989 § 8-30g legislation to exempt about 30 of our 169 towns that had the highest percentages of existing affordable, deed-restricted, or subsidized units.  The ten percent threshold is, of course, a policy-driven number, but it has worked as intended for 35 years.  This committee should dismiss the naysayers who assert that other towns, not theirs, should shoulder the responsibility for affordable housing.  Tim Hollister and Andrea Gomes are land use attorneys at the Hartford office of Hinckley Allen.  They both work regularly on affordable housing development.  In 2022-23, Hollister co-chaired a statewide working group tasked by the legislature with reviewing all of the affordable housing plans (so-called “§ 8-30j plans”) prepared by nearly all municipalities and providing recommendations on how such plans could be improved.  In September 2024, he published here a five-part series about affordable housing reform and in July 2025, a two-part series explaining House Bill 5002, the one vetoed by the governor in June 2025, and what could be done to fix it. Gomes regularly represents clients before local and state agencies and in state court. She has assisted with obtaining municipal approvals and litigating affordable housing matters and property disputes such as quiet title actions, easement disputes, nuisance actions, and adverse possession cases. Attorney Raphael Podolsky also contributed to this series. Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice, but a summary of public information.  The Act contains many important details not summarized here. ...read more read less