Rich Vs Poor Pt II

America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing

“You Build Where You Can”

Racial and economic segregation is not unique to Connecticut, but it is extreme and runs counter to the state’s liberal image. Democrats have controlled the state legislature for 22 years and the governor’s mansion for eight.In southwest Connecticut, the gap between rich and poor is wider than anywhere else in the country. Black and Hispanic residents statewide live in some of the nation’s most segregated neighborhoods, census data shows.The repercussions of living in segregated neighborhoods often last a lifetime.

“Neighborhoods matter,” researchers at Brown, Harvard and the U.S. Census Bureau concluded.The “Opportunity Atlas” they created makes clear just how much it matters by showing the stark differences in where the 20.5 million children they tracked ended up. For example, children who grew up in Cunningham’s Bridgeport neighborhood were five times more likely to be imprisoned on April 1, 2010, than those who grew up 2 miles down the road over the Fairfield line. The Bridgeport natives also made half the income of their Fairfield peers.

But the families of low-income children have few housing options in Connecticut’s higher-opportunity neighborhoods: 63 of the state’s 169 municipalities have no housing authorities to facilitate the creation of public housing and manage it.

In southwest Connecticut, where Cunningham lives with her family, it costs 3.5 times more to live near high-scoring elementary schools than the struggling schools her children attend, the Brookings Institution reported.“Would-be movers would have to spend about $25,000 more per year on housing to make that jump,” Brookings found.

Malloy, now a visiting professor at Boston College, explained in an interview why such a large share of affordable housing that opened during his tenure was in the poorest neighborhoods.

“You build where you can, where a community is inviting,” he said. “I do believe that there is not an openness and willingness to have the people who work in town, live in town. Maybe that’s because some towns want everyone to be the same. I don’t know why a town wouldn’t want a fireman or a policeman or a daycare worker who works in their community to be able to live in that community.”

Dannel P. Malloy, the former Democratic governor of Connecticut, in Bridgeport. During Malloy’s years in office, his administration directed $2.1 billion in public funding to renovate run-down public housing or build new housing so more low-income residents have an affordable place to live. The new housing was disproportionately built in the state’s poorest communities, however. Three-quarters of the new units constructed since 2011 were in the state’s 10 poorest municipalities, although only 20% of Connecticut’s housing stock is located in these communities. Just over 5% opened in the 10 wealthiest towns.Government subsidies aside, another way to bring down housing costs is to build duplexes or apartments on a lot — but that’s not being allowed in many communities, despite state law requiring local zoning commissions to “encourage” such development in order to “promote housing choice and economic diversity in housing.”

While dozens of towns have not permitted any duplexes and apartments to be built in two decades, the multiunit construction in another three dozen towns just replaced similar units that had been demolished. (This new construction data only includes privately owned residential developments and not public housing, dorms or hotels.) Local zoning rules are often to blame for the lack of more affordable development. “You can’t even build a duplex. Zoning just kills it,” said Sean Ghio, policy director at the Partnership for Strong Communities, an advocacy group that lobbies for more affordable housing. “People often fear the unknown, and as a result try to keep the unknown out of their lives by maintaining the status quo. The status quo in Connecticut is living in segregated communities.”

Local officials, however, say there are often legitimate reasons to deny multiunit housing because local infrastructure is not in place or there are environmental concerns.

“Unfortunately, we are limited in what we can provide,” said Joyce Stille, who since 1995 has been the administrative officer of Bolton, a small town in central Connecticut that has limited sewer access and where just one duplex has received a permit in 30 years. “Because of our proximity to Vernon and Manchester, we don’t really need any [affordable housing]. They have such a wide range of options. People don’t come to Bolton because Bolton has a higher cost of living.” Only 19 cities or towns allow housing with three or more units to be built without requiring special permits, according to a 2013 review by Trinity College’s Cities, Suburbs, and Schools Project and the Connecticut Fair Housing Center. Twenty-five municipalities explicitly prohibit such housing and 123 require a special town permit.

In some towns that do allow it, other zoning requirements make it exceedingly difficult for projects to come to fruition since they need more land to build anything besides a single-family home. For example, Monroe, a high-income town in southwest Connecticut, requires at least 70 acres for multifamily housing construction, and each unit may have no more than two bedrooms. A single-family home requires 1 acre.In its specially zoned “Housing Opportunity District,” 20 acres of land are required to build multifamily housing, but because of density restrictions only 13 apartments or townhomes may be built. Avon requires 15 acres for a two-unit home, compared with 1/3 acre for a single-family residence.“A large lot requirement makes it financially infeasible for such housing to be built. That’s just logic,” said Fionnuala Darby-Hudgens, who did the analysis that Connecticut’s Department of Housing used in its mandatory report to the federal government on exclusionary zoning.