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October 30, 2024

CT Apartment Assoc.: Forget rent caps, focus on expediting permit review process to jump-start housing

National Zoning Atlas A map showing areas where two-family homes are allowed by zoning regulations.
By David Krechevsky

In Connecticut, there are many communities that fight against the development of multifamily housing. According to the Connecticut Apartment Association (CTAA), that’s a major roadblock to solving the need for more housing in the state.

The association held a news conference Wednesday morning at The Pike, an apartment complex at 227 Pane Road in Newington, to outline its agenda for the 2025 session of the state General Assembly. According to the association, the solution to filling the state’s gap in multifamily housing “is a matter of math: Expansion plus renovation equals more housing.”

Dondré Roberts, a CTAA member and New Haven landlord who was recently appointed to that city’s Fair Rent Commission, noted that housing has been a key issue for state legislators the past two years.

“CTAA members rallied to urge our state legislators to boost Connecticut’s supply of quality, affordable living that works for every budget,” Roberts said. “Unfortunately, as many will attest, very little progress was made in building the 90,000-plus units of housing that Connecticut urgently needs.”

That figure comes from the Municipal Redevelopment Authority, a quasi-public state agency that said in July the state needs 90,000 to 100,000 new housing units.

Kevin Santini, a principal with Santini Homes, a family-owned property management and construction company in Vernon, presented maps of the state created by National Zoning Atlas that show the “staggering drop-off” from areas in Connecticut that allow for single-family homes to the far fewer areas zoned to allow accessory apartments, two-family and four-family homes.

“The key to success is very simple: Connecticut needs to want development,” Santini said. “Otherwise, there are too many ways to delay a proposed housing community.”

He added that local permitting and zoning processes need to be “transparent, predictable and flexible,” and that “too much red tape can grind housing development to a halt and raise the costs for our members to provide and Connecticut residents to rent apartment homes.”

CTAA officials said they spent the past few weeks speaking with legislative leaders in Hartford about several ideas to jump-start the development of more housing in Connecticut. They include:

  • Encouraging mixed-use development and integrating housing near utility and transit infrastructure.
  • Converting vacant commercial properties.
  • Simplifying and expediting the permit review process.
  • Following the National League of Cities and the American Planning Association’s Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook, which offers “tested and proven approaches from other states that can work here,” it said.

CTAA said one of the proven approaches in the playbook is to have towns use pre-approved housing plans that are already designed to adhere to local building codes and zoning regulations. It said such plans have worked in other states in communities with populations from 7,500 to 73,000 people.

Roberts said the CTAA believes legislators are on the right track. 

“Last year’s HB 5474 — which tackles the ‘missing middle” of duplexes, triplexes and housing that is sized between single-family and larger multifamily communities — is a great start and they need to keep going,” he said.

That bill, which was approved by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont in June, requires each municipality to submit annual reports to the State Responsible Growth Coordinator about residential building permit applications submitted, approved and denied in that community.

CTAA officials also said the legislature needs to narrow its focus on housing.

“We believe the legislature needs to turn away from the landlord/tenant battles like rent caps and ‘forever leases’ that held progress back over the last two years,” Santini said. “They were rejected, they took everyone’s eye off the ball, stalled progress — and they don’t grow housing.”

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