Greenwich “Dominates” Work Live Ride Bill Discussion during 13-Hour Hearing

Monday’s public hearing in Hartford hosted by the Connecticut legislature’s Planning & Development Committee ran a whopping 13 hours.

The hearing, chaired by State Rep Eleni Kavros DeGraw (D-17) representing Avon and Canton began, covered multiple bills, but the main event was the Work Live Ride bill, crafted by DeSegregate CT – HB 6831, “An Act Concerning Transit Oriented Communities.”

Each of 104 people who signed up to speak was allotted three minutes. Unless of course members of the committee had follow up questions.

In fact three Greenwich officials were asked open-ended questions, extending their testimony for quite some time.

The chair, Rep Kavros DeGraw, commented more than once that Greenwich was “dominating” the hearing.

The bill features the option to opt-in for towns to create a TOC district if they have a bus or rail service.

Greenwich, of course, has four train stations.

With a TOC district, the town is then eligible for prioritization for consideration of state funding and technical assistance from the Office of Responsible Growth (ORG) in Hartford, who will oversee a new fund for infrastructure for water and sewer capacity.

Supporters of the bill said its goal of encouraging more housing within a half mile of train and bus stations was valid, addressed the state’s housing shortage, and would decrease reliance on cars, in turn decreasing pollution.

Advocates also emphasized the acute housing shortage and shared facts from the Dept of Housing, including that 50% of Connecticut renters and 30% of its homeowners spend more than a third of their paychecks on housing.

Per the bill, TOC’s would allow the development of multi-unit housing of fewer than 10 units (the “missing middle”) or developments of 10+ units, if at least 30% of units are set aside, deed restricted, as affordable housing, as-of-right.

Fazio commented that any town that had yet to achieve the 8-30g 10% affordable housing goal would essentially be penalized by the as of right 10+ developments in a TOC.

“It adds to the denominator,” Fazio said.

Detractors of the bill said its “as-of-right” aspect would result in the absence of public hearings.

Still, several supporters said not having public hearings was not an issue because public hearings were inherently undemocratic.

Sean Ghio of the Partnership for Strong Communities said there were studies that showed that participants who testify in the special permit process tended to be older, white homeowners, and that the process precluded  younger people and people with young children from testifying, as well as workers in the town who live elsewhere.

Emily Burnaman, chair of the Norwalk Bike Walk Commission, elaborated on the joy of walkable neighborhoods like hers in Norwalk, where there is also easy access to public transportation.

“The Work Live Ride bill encourages Transit Oriented Communities where people can live, work and move safely without having to rely on a car for every trip for every trip. As a resident of South Norwalk I bike and walk every day with my dog Bentley, so I rely on these safe and accessible streets to get around.”

She said there were also areas that needed improvement, including better sidewalks, safer crossings and more protected bike infrastructure, and added that the TOC districts needed to be designed with Complete Streets in mind.

Ms Burnaman described the bill as not a mandate, but rather an opportunity.

Other supporters argued the bill would reduce the sprawl that results from expansion of single family homes on large lots, and would alleviate pollution because residents in TOD’s would rely less on cars.

Opponents, including officials from Greenwich, Darien and New Canaan argued their towns would be punished if they did not opt-in because they would not be prioritized for state funding via the ORG, and said they were already in the crosshairs out out-of-town and out-of-state developers.

They also argued they were currently making creative efforts to add all types of housing in their communities, despite having maxed out infrastructure, suffering from intense traffic and land values being exorbitant.

Early in the hearing the First Selectman of Darien, Jon Zagrodzky, said his town was working hard to support affordable housing and TOD, and their efforts had been “meaningful.”

He said projects in his town were often carried out by developers who are Darien residents.

“Our local developers are required to designate 14% of new apartments  the build being affordable,” Zagrodzky said. “This has resulted in 29 units of new affordable housing added in our town just the last three years, and 46 more approved and under construction over the newt three years. All of this in a town that is already 98% developed.”

Further he said Darien had amassed nearly $1 million in its Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

Rep Kavros DeGraw pushed back.

“I’m excited you’ve committed to that 14%, but I don’t know if I’d get necessarily excited by 29 units over three years,” she said.

“I would also point out that (Work Live Ride) is not a mandate. It is an option. And I believe your your (existing) transit oriented district would be grandfathered in. There’s a lot of talking points out there that are frankly incorrect and  misleading.”

She said that TOD would indeed be grandfathered.

Among those from Greenwich testifying were First Selectman Fred Camillo, Greenwich Communities board chair Sam Romeo, and Dan Quigley who serves as the chair of the RTMs Land Use Committee.

All three had extensive exchanges with State Senator Tony Hwang (R-28) whose district covers parts of Fairfield, and State Senator Ryan Fazio (R-36) from Greenwich whose district includes Greenwich, New Canaan and Stamford.

“When these mandates are thrown around from the state government without regard to flood mitigation efforts going on, without regard to beautifully maintained and protected neighborhoods, you bet people are concerned,” Camillo said.

Touching on the misleading narrative that Greenwich was wealthy and exclusive, Camillo said over 25% of Greenwich public school students were on free or reduced price lunch and almost 30% are ALICE families (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.)

He said many residents were “house rich and income poor.”

“A lot of people’s parents were tradesmen who bought their house with maybe a Veterans Administration loan for $12,000 in the late 40s or early 50s, and those houses are $1.2 million now. Where are they going to go if they don’t have a lot of savings?”

Senator Fazio agreed, saying an unintended consequence of the bill would be to penalize “early adopters” – homeowners who bought their houses decades earlier – for whom the house is their main asset. He said they would be financially vulnerable if a significant increase in housing supply drove down the prices of housing.

Senator Rahman said that still, people working in a supermarket or restaurant could not find a place to live in Greenwich.

“They are traveling from Bridgeport. They’re taking the bus, spending two hours to travel. They can’t find anything in Greenwich that they can afford. You don’t have enough housing, there’s a shortage,” Rahman said.

“We have a moral obligation to them, walking distance for them, to support their family.”

Senator Hwang said that given the proposed role of the ORG in Hartford, he would not want to remove talented P&Z experts from the process including people like Greenwich’s P&Z commission chair Margarita Alban, saying she was “fair minded,” for “proper growth” and whose commission were not “NIMBYs.”

“Margarita Alban has done a tremendous job,” Camillo said. I can’t praise her enough. And all the housing commissioners. …They know the town. That’s key.”

Camillo agreed with Senator Hwang, saying once a town opted-in for a TOC, and the “as-of-right” aspect kicked in, he worried that a “zoning czar” would take decisions away from local experts.

Senator Hwang talked about the perception in Greenwich of yachts and estates, and Greenwich being “out of touch, exclusive, and exclusionary.”

Camillo said he was also concerned Greenwich would be de-prioritized for grant funding if it declined to opt-in.

“The bill is punitive and it is threatening. An opt-in sounds really nice, you can opt in if you want. If you don’t, no problem. No harm no foul. It’s semantics. That’s not true at all. It’s punitive and it’s threatening.”

“I have yet to meet any public official in the state Democrat or Republican who thinks that’s a good idea,” Camillo added.

“That’s strange because this bill got 90 votes in the House last year,” said Rep Kavors DeGraw, who reminded people the bill had been tweaked and reintroduced five times.

“So I think you have met quite a few officials who think it’s a good idea.”

“This is another hammer in the hands of the developer,” said Sam Romeo from Greenwich’s housing authority, Greenwich Communities.

“Developers will come in and try to just meet the requirement to get the bonuses and make as much money as possible. …Developers are building studios and one bedrooms; that’s not helping families.”

Mr. Romeo said in recent years the housing authority in Greenwich had renovated every single one of the 1250 units in their inventory, and was in the final phase of renovations at Armstrong Court, a large 1950s era development.

In recent years, he said, “We have constructed over 40 brand new units, and purchased over 25 multi-family homes – we blend into the community.”

“We’ve invested over $170 million, between new construction and renovation in the last five years,” Romeo said. “And we have plans to build another 350 units. I’m working right now with the state to get funding.”

Czar or Czarina

And then there was the issue of leadership of the Office of Responsible Growth (ORG). Several times the secretary of ORG was referred to as a “czar.”

Rep DeGraw joked that the woman in the role would more accurately be described as “czarina.”

“A czarina with a scepter who would be deciding things,” she said.

But the czar term continued to be used, reflecting mistrust from Senator Fazio and others who argued that as-of-right meant there was no due process, no public hearings, and loss of local control.

And further, he was doubtful someone in Hartford could be as familiar with the 169 municipalities as local professionals and experienced volunteers on P&Z and Wetlands commissions, as well as residents sharing information in public hearings.

Tracy Marra (R-141) for Darien and Norwalk said, “Instead of fostering collaboration, I believe this bill consolidates power in the hands of a single unelected secretary, who would have the authority to determine what a town can or cannot do.”

“The word secretary appears almost 50 times throughout this bill. That sounds like a lot of power for one person to wield, especially if they are not elected, in a world of predatory housing.”

Still, many college and graduate students testified including Sebastian Torres, a UConn law student who is policy director of DeSegregate CT, who said that while Connecticut boasted some of the highest wages, so many of his peers at UConn could not afford to stay in the state.

“These are young professionals,” he said. “The problem they point to isn’t taxes or utilities, it is housing.”

Regional Plan Association

Pete Harrison former director of DeSegregate CT, now employed by RPA to oversee Desegregate CT, was #77 out of 104 people signed up to testify.

He said the bill was about trying to improve on natural historic density.

He dismissed several criticisms including that with as-of-right developments (up to 9 units), the denominator would increase and for towns trying to achieve the 10% goal of 8-30g.

Mr. Harrison that 2-9 units of housing represented “the missing middle,” which is in short supply.

As for loss of local control, he said, “To be perfectly clear, at no point in this process is a town going to be forced to approve a zoning change they don’t want. If they push back on parking requirements or set backs, there is a process in the bill’s language to escalate to the secretary of OPM. There is an opportunity for relief.”

He testified that the ORG in Hartford would actually be helpful, especially for towns that don’t have P&Z staff and volunteers with expertise to plan their own transit oriented communities.

“As for funding, the grants are competitive, there aren’t guarantees. We’re saying that in the world of limited state resources, we think there should be an extra incentive and prioritization for communities doing a little more to address the state economy and the housing crisis,” Harrison said. “I fundamentally reject that there’s a loss of local control and ‘deprioritization,’ is even relevant.”

Rep DeGraw said she had noticed there were 60 Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grants and only one was used for affordable housing.

“That displaces the argument that this is penalizing communities,” she said.

Sticks and Sticks

Greenwich’s RTM land use committee chair Dan Quigley said neither 8-30g or TOD were optimal solutions to the state’s affordability problem, and that local governments should explore creative approaches including strategic land purchases where the housing authority could create 100% affordable housing construction.

Also, he said giving the state “the right to come in and put their stamp on things over people who are in the trenches every day is a really bad idea.”

Quigley likened both the bill and DeSegregate Ct to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

“DeSegregateCT is an organization fueled by corporate interests whose primary financial backers are developers and real estate industry power players each of whom stand something to gain financially if progressive legislation like this is passed into law.”

“Some think its main goal is to create more ‘affordable’ market conditions in Connecticut by forcing an oversupply of housing into the market thereby lowering surrounding property values,” Quigley said.

In what might be the most memorable quote of the hearing, Quigley said despite talks of “carrots, not sticks,” with incentives for opting in, the bill boiled down to overt penalties for not opting-in and loss of local control for opting-in.

“It’s a stick on a stick,” he said.

Consequences for Small Towns

State Rep Doug Dubitsky whose 47th district includes the small towns of Brooklyn, Canterbury, Chaplin, Lisbon, Norwich, Plainfield, Scotland and Sprague, said they would be punished by the bill because they would be de-prioritized for funding.

“We just have a bunch of poor people who live out in the woods and on farms,” he said. “How will this bill help people out in rural Connecticut? We have no transit. We have no trains. We have virtually no buses. No sewers, no water, no police, no social services. We have nothing. We rely on the state funding, the Small Town Economic Assistance Program (STEAP) grants that we would be de-prioritized from receiving.”

Bill Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Roger Senserrich from CT Working Families said the state’s housing shortage was “massive” and that housing was the biggest expense for most working families.

“A lack of housing is pushing the state into a completely unaffordable and unobtainable position for many,” he said, adding that the Bridgeport-Stamford area was one of the most unaffordable areas in the country, and even prices in the Hartford area were rising at one of the fastest paces in the country.

“Probably this bill should be stronger, and it should go farther. It should increase and add more density, and should allow as-of-right construction to an even higher degree than it does,” he said. “But it’s a good first step.”

“Any housing we build in this state – it doesn’t matter which kind – will help with affordability. It’s a supply and demand problem…Adding more supply will help with affordability.”

“You’re right this bill should be stronger,” Rep Kavros DeGraw said. “This bill that we filed was the negotiated version we had and passed with 90 votes on the House floor last year, but you would think this was a bill from 5 years ago that nobody agreed on.”

The last speaker was Chris D’Antonio from Enfield who is a member of that town’s P&Z commission.

He said the bill rewarded towns that put the effort in and those who are not interested can simply not apply for the Transit Oriented Communities distinction.

“I will remind everyone that zoning is a power delegated from the state to localities, and the state has a role to play in proper planning,” D’Antonio  said.

“I must still disagree with the misrepresented notion that this bill revokes local control. On top of the voluntary opt-in, this does allow local zoning commissions to determine their own TOD district and update regulations as they see fit, using TOD best practice guidelines by the state.”

At the end of the hearing, Rep Kavros DeGraw thanked Mr. D’Antonio  for the reminder that it was the State of Connecticut that “enables zoning in every town.”