Connecticut's terrible shortage of housing isn't just impoverishing and putting great stress on thousands of people. It's killing people too.

The shortage is enabling unscrupulous landlords to rent substandard, overcrowded, and illegal rooms and apartments and causing desperate people to take them. According to the Connecticut Examiner, last year a man living in an illegal basement apartment in Stamford was killed by carbon monoxide from an unvented water heater illegally installed in the apartment's bathroom.

The Examiner says another Stamford resident died when he fell from the ladder that was his access to an illegal apartment in an attic.

Police say Stamford is full of illegal apartments sustained by the housing shortage. A leading Connecticut housing advocate says authorities can be reluctant to act against such apartments for fear that their tenants will be left on the street.

Hartford, New Haven, and other municipalities are undertaking or considering stricter enforcement of housing codes. But even some tenants who suffer from wretched conditions understand that stricter enforcement will lead to many evictions, and a wretched apartment is still better than the street.

Meanwhile, Connecticut is full of vacant commercial real estate and office buildings with empty space as more employees work from home. Many former church buildings also are empty and available for repurposing.

Some municipal governments, like those in Hartford and New Haven, are encouraging housing construction and conversions to mixed commercial and residential use. But those are long-term projects, even as the illegal and dangerous apartments suggest Connecticut needs many more housing units immediately.

The state's 169 municipalities will not work together to facilitate housing creation. But state government, flush with emergency federal money, is empowered and equipped to create housing where it is most needed, even if it is just to turn empty retail, office, and church space into temporary shelters.

Many initiatives will be proposed for state government in the new session of the General Assembly, but the most important should be to relieve the housing shortage with thousands of units, if only temporary ones, to be completed this year.

Hunt bobcats, too

Now that bears have become ubiquitous in Connecticut and increasingly break into houses, damage property, and cause human activity generally to be suspended while they wander along, this might be the year when state government gets real about them. A bear-hunting season should be enacted, if only in the northwest part of the state, through which most bears enter.

During his re-election campaign Governor Lamont endorsed such legislation, so the big question is whether a majority of state legislators keep being cowed by the bear lobby, which is small but ferocious.

As shown by an incident at a farm in Marlborough on the day after Christmas, Connecticut should authorize hunting of bobcats as well. A bobcat broke through the window of a pen and slaughtered the 25 ducks inside but was unable to get back out. While the law entitled the farm owners to shoot the predator, they instead were persuaded to recruit a trapper to catch and relocate it. This was a mistake, since the bobcat may go on to attack someone else's livestock or pets.

There is no good reason for state law to protect predators of domestic animals. Bobcats are stealthy and smart, and even with a hunting season, Connecticut isn't likely to get rid of them. Reducing the damage they do is the most that can be hoped for.

Killing competition

Why were Connecticut's liquor stores closed on New Year's Day? While it was a Sunday, in recent years the law has allowed liquor stores to open on Sundays.

State law requires liquor stores to close on New Year's Day not to serve any public interest but because most store operators want to be able to close without suffering competition from stores that would stay open if allowed.

So the liquor stores have induced state government to defeat their competition for them, just as they have induced state government to legislate minimum prices for their products. The liquor lobby is even more ferocious than the bear lobby and terrifies state legislators almost as much as the government employee unions do.