Let's Talk Housing
Facts Matter
Reforming 8-30g While Promoting Middle Housing
I’ve had the privilege to serve Fairfield and Southport for nearly four years. During my tenure, I hear regularly from seniors who want to downsize and stay in our community, residents whose children want to return home after college or a few years working elsewhere, and people who have gone through a divorce and want to remain near their kids but can’t find anywhere to live.
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Further devastating evidence of our housing shortage is that for the third year in a row, our homelessness has increased by double digits. It is heartbreaking that 20% of our homeless population are children and 25% are seniors.
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I have also worked hard to balance our community’s understandable frustration with the 35-year-old 8-30g law and our high cost of living, largely driven by housing prices. Addressing our housing shortage and prices were also top issues for the CT Business Industry Association (CBIA) in terms of making our state more affordable for businesses to operate and for attracting new businesses. Without places for people to live, businesses can’t come here or grow here.
Watch Jenn's Testimony on S.B. 169
Watch Jenn's Forum on Local Affordable Housing
As we know, here in Fairfield County, the market conditions make 8-30g applications very profitable for developers. A primary flaw in the law is how it allows for developers to benefit themselves through this process by squeezing in undesired density, escaping design review, building housing that feels out of place within a neighborhood, and exacerbating congestion.
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My voting record and approach to actually addressing these issues demonstrates the thought and care that I take when crafting housing policy. For years, I have worked tirelessly with my colleagues to enhance their understanding of the market forces here in Fairfield County and why certain proposals would neither achieve their affordability goals nor deliver the outcomes our community desires. It’s easy to “say no” but it’s more challenging to work on real solutions for a deeply complex issue such as this while bringing different stakeholders together to find common ground and compromise.
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This year, we had the unique opportunity to pass housing legislation that meaningfully reformed 8-30g while promoting the smaller-scale middle housing I regularly hear requests for from our community. This reform represents the most consequential 8-30g reform since the law's inception. Towns will now be rewarded for the creation of middle housing in “as of right zones” (i.e. without a special permit), regardless of the unit’s affordability. The law empowers local Town Plan and Zoning Commissions to design and designate such a zone if they want.
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Fairfield already has two of these multifamily “as of right” zones, Zones B and C. Currently, here in Fairfield, Zone B allows duplexes as of right on lots of 9,000 sqft or larger. Likewise, Zone C allows duplexes as of right on 7,000 sqft lots, triplexes on 10,000 sqft lots, and four-units on lots of 12,000 sqft or more. Any future multifamily development in these zones will automatically be awarded points towards our 8-30g moratorium. This reform was meant to specifically incentivize the small-scale housing and pocket neighborhoods that our community is seeking. As a personal aside, I happen to live in a single-family home in Zone B and my property value has only gone up while our neighborhood’s housing stock is diverse and healthy.
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Having more tools for municipalities to achieve and then stack moratorium means that developers will no longer be able to build under 8-30g. In Fairfield, we are extremely close to our first moratorium and this new law will help us achieve our next one. Fairfield will continue to grow and change but it will be at our discretion and not at the sole discretion of developers.
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Housing will continue to be an incredibly complex—and often fraught—topic in our community. Balancing how we address our housing crisis with thoughtful solutions that meet the needs of our community is a challenge that I am proud to continue to tackle. As I’ve done for four years, I’m committed to listening to your concerns and fighting for meaningful solutions that benefit our community and state.
Jennifer Leeper
State Representative 132,
Proudly Serving Fairfield & Southport
