by Alexis Harrison
CT169Strong, a grassroots, non-partisan group dedicated to creating solutions to make Connecticut more affordable, today issued a response to DesegregateCT’s draft Live Work Ride legislation, which aims to create dense residential development in Connecticut’s communities near transit areas, punishing towns who have already taken the initiative of creating transit-oriented development affo(TOD) on their own. Transit-oriented development is not a new concept – for years, many communities throughout Connecticut have already successfully embraced TOD and have built vibrant communities in their transit areas under the purview of their planning and zoning commissions.
The current draft bill is the fourth attempt by lobbyist group DesegregateCT to coerce towns into adopting their measure, which would remove public hearings on multifamily projects and negate local discretion on crucial developments.
This legislation calls for municipalities to surrender local autonomy to comply with DesegregateCT’s objective of enriching developers. Work Live Ride would require only administrative reviews, bypassing local public hearings, broadening the state Office of Responsible Growth to oversee creation of Transit-Oriented Communities is a serious issue that is unacceptable and undermines home rule.
The draft bill lures municipalities to “opt” into the law or else they will be deprioritized for discretionary State funding. The State already gives a lion’s share of affordable housing development funding (State grants, vouchers and 9% low income housing tax credits) to a handful of big cities and this bill will encourage more of the same.
Statement from CT169Strong:
“The 2024 Work Live Ride bill appears to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The legislation appears intentionally vague as to the requirements of density and number of units of development to deflect from the hand-out that this bill appears to be to developers. The bill apparently, once again, uses as of right development, ending the public hearing process.
As we predicted, the number of mandated affordable units keeps getting smaller, which begs the question: is this really about affordable housing? We remain skeptical.
“Our lawmakers should be creating laws that aid and empower our towns and provide more equitable allocations of state and federal grants, vouchers and low income housing tax credits to communities of all sizes to spur affordable development. Instead this bill removes local control, limits funding resources to communities unless the relent to onerous state mandated guidelines, thus disincentivizing towns from affordable development. CT169Strong questions whether any community outside of the larger cities that already receive the lion’s share of state funding for affordable development will opt in to this bill. So what is the point really aside from another handout to developers with lower affordable housing requirements?”
Visit CT169Strong.org to learn more about draft legislation.
CT169 Strong is a non-partisan grassroots organization dedicated to local zoning control to ensure thoughtful and appropriate development of our communities through prudent land use decision making.
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