Ongoing efforts to create more affordable housing in Connecticut include a five-year, $73 million redevelopment of the former Dutch Point Colony public housing site in Hartford, which recently wrapped up its first phase.
An initiative to create more affordable housing could be making its way to the General Assembly’s Housing Committee by the end of the month.
The plan – called the Connecticut Housing Program for Economic Growth, or Home Connecticut for short – aims to create 63,000 new housing units over the next 15 years, with at least 20 percent of those homes being designated as affordable. Towns, participating voluntarily, would receive a series of grants and incentives for opting into the program.
David Fink, policy director at the Partnership for Strong Communities in Hartford, has been talking up the plan to legislators. The housing plan is an initiative put forth by the partnership.
“There’s been interest on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “I think this governor understands that you need to create housing. For all the effort that she and the legislators have put into job creation, you can’t succeed unless you have housing for the workers to live in.”
The Home Connecticut campaign cites a variety of statistics and surveys to underscore the state’s need for affordable housing.
For example, the Connecticut Business and Industry Association’s 2006 annual member survey reported that 70 percent of its executives believe a lack of affordable housing is making it difficult to attract new employees. Home Connecticut also reports that in 2005, a family earning the median income in a given community could not qualify for a home being marketed at the median price in 157 of the state’s 169 municipalities.
“What was once a southwestern Connecticut issue is now an issue all over Connecticut,” Fink said.
‘Hitting the Street’
Even as the Home Connecticut bill takes shape, state and local agencies already are moving ahead with various efforts to create more affordable housing.
The Hartford Housing Authority and the nonprofit The Community Builders Inc., for example, recently finished the first phase of a five-year, $73 million redevelopment of the former Dutch Point Colony public housing site. That phase includes 73 affordable rental apartments in 15 newly constructed or renovated buildings. The entire project calls for 129 affordable rental units and 71 condos and townhouses, of which 30 will be subsidized for sale to low- and moderate-income buyers.
In 2005, Gov. M. Jodi Rell established the $100 million Housing Trust Fund, which is designed to create housing for low- and moderate-income homebuyers via grants and loans. The fund’s monies can be used for expenses such as acquisition, rehabilitation, new construction and down payment assistance.
A couple of the state’s more recent grants include allotments of $7.5 million and $4 million for affordable housing projects in Stamford and New Haven, respectively, last month.
The Stamford grant is earmarked for 90 units of affordable housing at Fairfield Court. Fifty-five of those will be affordable units, according to plans, with 35 units rented at market rate. Fifteen of the 55 affordable units are for households at or below 50 percent of area median income.
The project in New Haven calls for demolishing an older housing project and building 229 new units, with 185 of those reserved for renting households earning at or below 60 percent of the area’s median income. Another 25 are slated for sale as affordable units, with the remaining 19 to be sold at market rate.
“Certainly this governor recognizes the need for affordable housing in Connecticut,” said Thomas Ciccalone, executive director of the state’s Office of Housing Finance. “It’s a key tool in the economic development toolbox.”
Whether that means the Home Connecticut bill will succeed in the General Assembly remains to be seen.
“If nothing else, [Home Connecticut has] brought more attention to the economic benefits of affordable housing,” Ciccalone said.
Home Connecticut’s plan is to raise the number of new homes gained annually to 15,000.
Since the late 1990s, the number of new homes added each year has been around 10,000, Fink said. Increasing the amount of new inventory each year should help address the demand and slow the climbing prices, he said.
In 2005, the state had a net gain of 10,499 housing units – with 11,885 constructed and 1,386 demolished, according to the state Department of Labor. That year marked the highest level of production since 1989, and raised the state’s total housing stock to an estimated 1.4 million units.
More time likely will be needed to assess how well current projects – such as those in Hartford, Stamford and New Haven – meet the state’s needs.
“These dollars are just hitting the street,” said James Watson, spokesman for the Department of Economic and Community Development, which administers the Housing Trust Fund. “Seeing their true effect is going to take some time.”
Watson and Ciccalone cited the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority as another key player in addressing the state’s housing demands.
CHFA assists low- and moderate-income buyers with their first mortgages, and did 4,010 such loans in 2006. That’s more than 500 above the authority’s goal of 3,500 for the year, according to CHFA Marketing and Customer Service Coordinator Rose Holbrook.
The average loan size was $171,917, with an average household income of $59,485. The average number of people per household was 2.2, and the average age was 33.32.
“We’ve been doing these types of loans for over 30 years,” Holbrook said, noting that CHFA ranks fourth in terms of loans produced nationwide when compared to similar authorities in other states.
In recognizing a need for more housing units, CHFA is getting ready to kick off a new development program. It is designed to target urban areas where less than half of the homes are owner-occupied. For now, the authority is looking at Bridgeport, Hartford, New Britain, New London, New Haven, Waterbury and Windham as places to start.
The two-part plan includes low-interest project financing for the developers, and low-interest mortgages for the buyers. The authority is hoping to announce the program’s first projects by the end of the month.
“We are looking at ways to increase affordable homeownership across the state,” Holbrook said.
