There is a bill currently being considered by the Connecticut General Assembly that aims to make the type of home I grew up in legal again.  Senate Bill 151 would once again allow home builders to construct the kinds of houses that are a historic part of our Connecticut towns and villages. Sma ller homes with efficiently laid out floor plans that are served by municipal water and sewer services have traditionally been a part of the vast majority of the 169 cities and towns in Connecticut since the New Deal. They have been an important vehicle for all manner of Americans to make a secure home for their families, stabilize their financial condition, and build generational wealth. The bill’s most important provision would require local zoning rules to allow minimum building lots of at least 5,000 square feet in neighborhoods that are served by municipal water and sewer. The small cape I grew up in on Ledyard Street in New London during the 1960s and 1970s, and where my parents continued to live until my mother’s passing in 2008, sat on a 50 by 100 foot parcel – exactly the 5,000 square foot lot this bill seeks to make legal again. Fifty feet of street frontage was typical for the neighborhood, and the 100 foot depth made our back yard feel spacious. The previous owners were avid gardeners, and we inherited a yard filled with lilacs, birch trees, a riot of daffodils each spring, a rock garden with crocuses and moss, and a fieldstone outdoor fireplace for cookouts (and burning wrapping paper on Christmas morning after all the gifts had been opened). But this was a modest home, in a neighborhood of other modest homes. During the years my parents owned it, our neighbors were families headed by teachers, middle managers, electricians, police officers, fire fighters, as well as empty nesters and widowed elders. We were a crazy quilt of ethnicities, religions, races, grandparents from other countries, educations, and ways of making a living. But our families owned these homes, were “working off” their mortgages, and that fact was important. In their final years, the fact that my parents owned their home outright allowed them to live a life without excessive financial worry on the modest retirement income they were able to put together as a union pipefitter and a part-time secretary. These homes serve the entire life cycle of their working and middle class owners – from young married couples, to growing families, to empty nesters, and the elderly. They continue to do so today – a new family with young children now lives in the house I grew up in. But over the years, many towns have adopted zoning codes that don’t permit more homes like this to be built. And making these homes illegal is a major contributor to the housing crisis our state now faces. We should stop allowing local zoning authorities from making modest homes illegal. Why local authorities have made modest homes illegal is beyond my scope here. But I am weary of the false cry of “local control” as an excuse for making modest homes illegal. The cities and towns of Connecticut are not independent law-making entities. They are political subdivisions of the State of Connecticut. They are allowed to pass local zoning codes within the provisions of the Connecticut General Statutes. And those statutes can be changed. I hope the General Assembly, and the Governor, will change the General Statutes by adopting Senate Bill 151, and let people have the kind of home that my family lived in, and thrived in, again. Peter O’Connor, of Mystic, is a retired lawyer and public official.           ...read more read less