Earlier this summer, Gov. Ned Lamont vetoed HB 5002, a housing bill that would have helped overcome a legacy of redlining and increase housing equity and affordability for all Connecticut residents.
In the 1930s, the federal government commissioned the creation of maps that classified neighborhoods by risk and the chances that borrowers would default on their loans. The maps all too often classified African American neighborhoods and those with immigrants as too risky for lending. These were color coded red – hence the name redlining. Over the ensuing decades, the neighborhoods received few loans, contributing to decay and abandonment of the housing stock as I document in my recent book, “Ending Redlining through a Community-Centered Reform of the Community Reinvestment Act.”
In cities across Connecticut, communities of color and modest income neighborhoods experienced redlining and continue to face significant disadvantages today.
In Waterbury, a federal agency map classified the North Square neighborhood as too risky for lending. To this day, this community experiences disadvantages including a higher poverty rate of 43% and shorter life expectancy of just 73 years as opposed to an average of 81 years in the neighborhoods with the most loans. Almost 80% of the residents are people of color.
In Hartford, a federal map classified the Windsor Street neighborhood as risky for lending. Today, 69% of neighborhood residents are people of color, the poverty rate is 41%, and the life expectancy is 75 years, a decade shorter than the life expectancy of 85 years in neighborhoods that were deemed the least risky for lending. This pattern repeats itself in neighborhoods deemed high risk in Bridgeport and New Haven.
In New Britain, residents of a wealthy neighborhood protested a proposed duplex, which would have been more affordable for recent immigrants from Italy. By 1940, the opposition to more affordable housing not only kept out the recent immigrants but also African Americans that located in disadvantaged neighborhoods with multifamily housing deemed less desirable.
Accompanying redlining in communities of color was exclusive zoning in white and affluent areas that often only allowed single family zoning on oversized lots. People of color were therefore confined to neighborhoods with deteriorating and unsanitary housing and could not move to more desirable areas. The zoning also reduced the supply of housing and contributed to the unaffordability of housing.
In “Excluded,” the scholar Richard Kahlenberg documents that home prices nationally are the least affordable at any time in the last 33 years, in part because of restrictive zoning. In suburbs and cities across the country, up to two thirds to three fourths of the land is zoned for single-family housing, preventing increases in the supply of more affordable housing. He also reports that if cities allowed for more multifamily housing, workers could move to areas with higher wages, resulting in average wages increasing by nearly $9,000. Nationally, relaxed zoning could increase the Gross Domestic Product by almost $400 billion.
HB 5002 would mitigate the impacts of exclusionary zoning and redlining by requiring towns to create specified numbers of additional housing, including for low- and moderate-income households, based on calculations of need and housing scarcity. Jurisdictions could pursue a variety of strategies to achieve their housing goals. Certain zoning requirements would be eased if jurisdictions wanted to build higher density housing.
The public sector planning for more housing could be supplemented by further encouraging banks to adhere to their requirements under the Community Reinvestment Act to increase their financing of affordable homeowner and rental housing. In addition to federal law, Connecticut is one of a handful of states that also has a CRA requirement.
As the governor and legislators reconsider HB 5002 in a special session starting soon, they must preserve the major incentives of the bill. Jurisdictions with the most ambitious affordable housing plans should be awarded the most state funds for infrastructure. A lack of good faith efforts should also result in penalties such as state overrides of exclusionary zoning measures. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity presented by HB 5002. It increases housing equity that benefits all of us by boosting overall economic growth and the social well-being of overlooked communities.
Josh Silver is a local author of “Ending Redlining through a Community-Centered Reform of the Community Reinvestment Act.”
