A legislative session that housing advocates say didn’t go far enough to address the affordability crisis has ― for better or worse ― left it largely to individual cities and towns to work toward a solution.

Opponents of legislation to foster affordable housing options say the responsibility should remain local. But advocates argue suburban and rural towns left to their own devices will not do their part to help resolve the mismatch between supply and demand that hits low income earners the hardest.

Two of the most sweeping affordable housing proposals before the state legislature this year, both with the goal of increasing affordable housing across the state through zoning reform, failed to gain passage during the session that ended this past Wednesday at midnight.

There are at least 89,000 more low-income households in Connecticut looking for monthly housing payments they can afford than there are places for them to live, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Beth Sabilia, director of the Center for Housing Equity and Opportunity in Eastern Connecticut, said Thursday she thinks most people agree the lack of affordable housing is a problem.

When it comes to solutions, she pointed to “disagreement on the implementation.”

The fiercest opposition to state efforts to promote construction of affordable apartments and houses has come from Fairfield County, where local officials and grassroots activists decry the threat to local control that comes when state law overrides a zoning commission’s ability to dictate the size and scope of apartment complexes and subdivisions.

The problem isn’t going away, according to Sabilia.

“When you see more and more people struggling, one would think and expect that a wealthy state like Connecticut can join the fight to make sure that people have safe, adequate and affordable housing,” Sabilia said. “If we can’t do it here, where can it be done? We’re a tiny, wealthy state. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

The flash point for this year’s legislative session, which began in January and ended Wednesday, was a proposal that would change the local zoning landscape by requiring all but the most impoverished municipalities to produce a certain number of affordable homes. Ultimately, lawmakers decided to study the concept rather than put it into action.

The Housing Committee chairwoman, state Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, acknowledged the state still has a way to go to address the need for more affordable housing, but called this year’s affordable housing legislation “a step in the right direction.”

Fair Share

The “Fair Share” zoning proposal looks ahead 10 years to a time when advocates hope there will be 140,000 more affordable homes than there are now. The key is that the homes will be spread out across the state instead of clustered in cities.

The plan is promoted by the nonprofit Open Communities Alliance and its Growing Together Connecticut coalition.

The group calculated the need by looking at how many households in the lowest income brackets are spending more than 50% of their income on housing-related expenses. Estimates put 10,200 of those households in New London County.

Towns that don’t meet their assigned goal would be subject to “default zoning” requiring them to allow multifamily developments of up to 20 units in areas with public water and sewer access, or smaller-scale developments in other areas as local public health codes permit.

Open Communities Alliance executive director Erin Boggs in a statement said the bill was consistently watered down after it emerged from the legislature’s Housing Committee.

“During those several months, we met with dozens of legislators and tried our best to address their concerns. We made significant concessions to them on almost every section of the bill, including the number of units to be built and the timeframe to implement the Fair Share plan,” she said.

Boggs said her organization was not willing to concede the enforcement mechanism that “would have forced non-complying towns to do something meaningful.”

Remnants of the Fair Share bill appeared in an omnibus housing bill that passed in the waning hours of the session Wednesday. It called for an analysis of how best to spread the need for lower-cost housing options across the state.

The omnibus package contains more than 40 housing-related provisions to enhance tenant protections, study weaknesses in the state’s housing voucher program and give the state more of a role in planning for affordable housing.

It passed the Democrat-dominated Senate by a vote of 23-13.

Republican state Sen. Heather Somers, of Groton, opposed measures designed to protect renters, which she described as too burdensome for landlords. Elements in the bill include restrictions on what landlords can charge in late rent fees or for screening reports and a provision to remove online eviction records within 30 days if the case is withdrawn, dismissed or decided in the tenant’s favor.

She opposed the study that Republicans repeatedly referred to as the “Fair Share first step” because it will lead to implementation in future sessions.

“As a former mayor, all I remember saying is ‘Hartford needs to stop with the mandates. Leave us alone. Let us decide. We know our town best. Local control is the best control,’” she told senators during deliberations. “And I think this does the exact opposite.”

Transit-oriented development

The omnibus package also puts into state law the Office of Responsible Growth, which was originally created through an executive order from Gov. Jodi Rell in 2006 to promote transportation, housing and environmental planning. That, as well as funding in the state budget to revitalize the agency, is what’s left of a proposal from the grassroots DesegregateCT organization to incentivize affordable housing in and around towns with regular train and bus routes.

Under the provisions of the failed bill, towns that put “transit-oriented development” districts into their zoning regulations become eligible for expert planning guidance from the Office of Responsible Growth as well as funding for certain infrastructure programs like water and sewer system expansion, remediation of polluted sites or streetscape improvements.

Towns that don’t update their zoning regulations to include more affordable options slip to the bottom of the priority list for those grants.

Democrat state Sen. Cathy Osten, of Sprague, joined the region’s Republican senators in voting against the bill. She said Thursday that most of the small, rural towns she represents don’t have enough water and sewer capacity to support the kind of multifamily affordable housing developments favored by advocates and state policies.

“There’s no infrastructure,” she said. “(The advocates) say that that’s not their issue to deal with. But it is. Because if we want to have affordable housing, we have to have the infrastructure available.”

But Boggs on Thursday said there are ways to work around a lack of public water or sewer, including building smaller developments or using community septic systems. Plus, she said, putting Fair Share into law could spur more state and federal funding for infrastructure projects that support affordable housing.

“Something like the Fair Share proposal actually creates more of an incentive for the state as a whole to come together and make those investments strategically,” she said.

DesegregateCT director Pete Harrison said his organization’s “Work Live Ride” proposal was an effort to address infrastructure concerns by focusing on areas with transit options that are more likely to have the appropriate infrastructure in place.

Noting neither Fair Share nor Work Live Ride won out this session, he said the legislature this year did not effectively address the lack of affordable housing in the state.

“We’re all disappointed and a little shocked that more wasn’t done given the severity of the crisis.”

‘Show us the train station’

State Rep. Aundre Bumgardner, D-Groton, said affordable housing ties into the potential expansion of the Shore Line East rail system into Westerly that’s currently being studied. He’s hopeful a new station can be built on Route 1 in Groton where strip malls and large parking lots currently dominate. It’s also a good place for affordable apartments to be built above or alongside businesses so residents will have easy access to public transportation and shopping.

But those like Osten believe building affordable housing isn’t realistic as long as the state isn’t adequately funding the rail system. She pointed to the newly approved, bipartisan state budget that cuts Shore Line East funding to 44% of its pre-pandemic levels because not enough people have started using the train again.

Bumgardner thinks local support for affordable housing can drive the state to put more money into transportation.

He referred to a conversation with Gov. Ned Lamont during which the governor told lawmakers the state will invest in transportation if cities and towns are willing to come up with the blueprint for more affordable housing.

It’s an approach the state representative said he can get behind.

“We will show you the housing in areas that are appropriate for development, and you show us the train station,” Bumgardner said.

Sabilia, the director of the Center for Housing Equity and Opportunity in Eastern Connecticut, said the failure of lawmakers to enact meaningful zoning reform at the state level means the solutions are going to have to happen closer to home.

“We need to take this town by town and region by region,” she said.

e.regan@theday.com