One year ago I predicted that, in the 2025 legislative session, our General Assembly would fail to address the ongoing housing crisis in any significant way: Connecticut needs a regional approach to housing A bill was passed by the legislature (HB 5002), and then the governor vetoed it. In a special session over the summer, the legislature passed another housing bill, (HB 8002) which the governor signed and is now law. There are some things about it to admire, especially the provisions that seek to help our neighbors who are hardest hit by the housing crisis — people who have no housing at all, or whose housing is threatened by eviction. It brings the language of “smart growth” into the conversation, encouraging the adoption of transit-oriented development districts, priority development housing zones, and the like. But it does not address in a serious way the housing crisis. For decades now, many of Connecticut’s towns have successfully thwarted the creation of new housing within their borders that would help address the need. And under this new law these towns will unfortunately be able to continue to do so. (I refer to towns alone, and not cities, as the handful of actual cities in Connecticut have historically encouraged housing production.) Last January, I argued that a more regional approach to land-use planning, guided by the state’s nine councils of governments “COGs” (which are composed of the cities and towns within their jurisdictions) might be a way to navigate between: a.) the statewide goal of producing more housing and b.) the desire of towns to control development within their borders without regard to the statewide housing crisis. The new law does, in fact, lean heavily on the data-based, regional, land-use plans that the COGs have produced for years, and which the cities in towns within each COG’s region participate in drafting. These plans consider all the factors that good land-use planning requires, like the availability of infrastructure such as roads, public transit, and water and sewer facilities, as well as environmental conditions like wetlands and the protection of other fragile resources. But they have been, historically, basically advisory. Now, provisions in this new law encourage towns to align their town-wide zoning to the regional plan for their COG jurisdiction. It lays out a lengthy and iterative process whereby the Secretary of the Office of Policy Management reviews town zoning codes for compliance with the regional plans’ housing goals. But — and this is a big but — if a town’s housing goals do not meet the law’s goals for alignment with the regional plan, there are no real consequences. Essentially, the secretary may deny state funding to assist that town in planning for new housing, as well as state funding to plan and construct the infrastructure related to new housing. But if the town’s leadership doesn’t want the new housing, denying them state funds to assist them in planning for new housing is hardly much of an incentive for each town to plan for new housing that they don’t want to begin with. Gov. Ned Lamont likes to describe this approach as “towns lead the way.” But towns leading the way is precisely what got us to where we are now – at least 110,000 homes short of the need. The new law comes close to imagining a way forward, of bridging the gap between the statewide need for more housing and the so-called “local control” advocates who rail at “interference from Hartford.” It is important to remember that the 169 cities and towns in Connecticut are not independent entities but rather political subdivisions of the state, and have only the powers that the General Assembly grants them. Local control of zoning is conducted solely by the authority granted, and the rules laid out, in Chapter 124 of the Connecticut General Statues. What this law still needs, if we are serious about addressing the housing shortage, is a bit more than holding back planning grants from recalcitrant towns. What I suggested a year ago, and I advocate now, is that the regional plans be activated as enforceable documents. If a developer is denied permits to build new housing in a town, but the regional plan envisions it, the law should provide the developer with a cause of action against the town on that basis. This would operate along the lines of Chapter 8-30(g), which gives a developer a cause of action against a town that denies permits for any housing development that proposes some amount of affordable housing, if the town’s housing stock does not meet a 10 percent minimum affordable housing standard. But Section 8-30(g) is almost an anti-planning approach. It doesn’t matter if the proposed housing is located where it doesn’t make sense from a planning standpoint. What I am advocating is a pro-planning approach. If the regional plan envisions housing for a location, but the town says “No,” then the onus should be on the town to explain their denial to a judge. Local control advocates can’t moan about “We don’t want Hartford telling us what to do” under this approach, because every city and town within each COG would have participated in the drafting of the regional plan. These regional plans are a far better way of guiding rational growth than arbitrary, one size fits all, standards for all 169 cities and towns. And we should use them, and let developers rely on them, and stop letting local control advocates, and the town governments they hold sway over, thwart us from meeting our housing goals as a state. Peter O’Connor of Mystic is a lawyer and former state and local government official. ...read more read less