Advocates are expressing disappointment in Gov. Ned Lamont for his Monday veto of a broad bill they say would have helped alleviate the state’s housing crisis.
“There’s a lot of disappointment and, frankly, anger,” said Pete Harrison, Connecticut director of the Regional Plan Association, a think tank that advocated for the bill. “It’s just a real poor leadership decision.”
The bill would have, among many other provisions, required cities and towns to set goals for the creation of affordable housing units, but did not mandate their construction.
Among Lamont’s objections to the bill was that he didn’t feel it had enough “buy-in” from municipalities. Harrison said while there needs to be collaboration on housing policy between the state and its cities and towns, Lamont can’t make universal local support a prerequisite to taking action on a problem as pressing as housing.
“I don’t know if Gov. Lamont is waiting around to get 169 towns and cities to give the thumbs up to a housing bill,” Harrison said. “If he is, he’s going to be disappointed, and we need to tell him not to do that.”
“Inaction is not an option for Connecticut,” Harrison said. “To get this far, to have the governor's support through both chambers [of the state General Assembly] and then to have this happen is a terrible, terrible look for the state, a terrible disservice to the people struggling in our state.”
The Open Communities Alliance, a nonprofit that also pushed for the bill, said it was frustrating to see objections based on false claims enter into the governor’s reasoning for the veto.
“It’s not a state takeover of zoning. It’s not central planning,” said Hugh Bailey, the organization’s policy director, recounting critiques of the legislation. “It’s not any of that.”
“We can't be a state that grounds its public policy on misinformation,” said Executive Director Erin Boggs. “That's just not a good principle to be designing our laws on.”
“A lot of municipal leaders… were getting information that was just plain wrong,” Boggs said. “We had a conversation with a first selectman from Fairfield County who opposed the bill very vigorously and then came into a meeting with us and said, ‘I actually don't know what this is about.’ By the time we were done with our call with him, he started to see some real upsides.”
Lamont said he would call a special session of the legislature in the fall aimed at passing housing legislation. Boggs and Bailey said they’re looking forward to that.
“As difficult in the moment as it was to hear what the governor was saying, in thinking about it, there’s a lot of common ground,” Bailey said.
“I’m hoping that we can come back in the fall and come up with maybe an even better and perhaps stronger bill,” said Boggs.
“We are the most housing-constrained state in the nation,” Boggs said. “It's not only hurting families and individuals in all kinds of ways, but it is also really hurting our economy.”
“It is absolutely a crisis,” she said, “and we have to do something about it as we move forward.”
