Aleena Thomas is living in her three-bedroom home in Derby with one foot already out the door. Her landlord has asked her to leave. And she has every intention of doing so, but first she has to find the ideal home as a single mother of five children.
Her hopes include a four-bedroom unit in New Haven county so that she can stay close to her job and school, a driveway so that she doesn’t have to park two blocks from her home and a yard so that her children have ample room to play.
“I’m ready to go, like I have everything packed up already. But I don’t know if that’s gonna even be possible because I still have not found anything,” Thomas said.
She’s been on the hunt since June and said it’s been hard even with a Realtor by her side.
Surrounded by the boxes her family is living out of as they wait for the right unit, Thomas, still in her work scrubs, scrolls through her recently viewed properties on Zillow, including one in Woodbridge, where more than 50% of units have four or more bedrooms.
“It’s very nice. It’s very quiet. I know my kids are gonna have a yard. And it’s a good area,” Thomas said.
The five-bedroom house is exactly what she’s looking for. But it’s almost double her budget.
Thomas isn’t the only Connecticut renter having trouble navigating a market with rising rents and the fewest available rental units of any state. As demand for affordable housing grows, some advocates are pushing suburban towns to do more – not simply address economic pressures – because, as Thomas believes, it’s a racial justice issue as well.
“They don't have a housing authority. Even when you're buying there, it's very hard to buy. So yeah, I would love to live there. But they're not open to people like me,” Thomas added, referring to her identity as a Black woman.
In Woodbridge, a woody suburb of New Haven, less than 3% of residents identify as Black, compared with about 13% statewide and 34% next door in New Haven, according to census data. The median household income in Woodbridge is about $170,000 – more than double the average household income in the county – and 10% of residents are renters compared with more than half in New Haven.
Thomas said the difference between Woodbridge and a city like New Haven makes it seem like Woodbridge could never be within reach for her.
“Every person of color is not going to make your property values go down. You know, people of color are hardworking. We do have values, we do have morals, we do have goals. So I think that they should be open to it,” Thomas said.
Some Woodbridge residents agree. And they’ve joined up with housing and civil rights advocates to compel change. Instead of simply hoping for the town to build more housing options for lower-income residents, they’re putting local zoning, which they say is the problem, center stage before Connecticut Superior Court.
“I think our short-term, or maybe more concrete goal, would be change within Woodbridge, but then change beyond Woodbridge,” said Cary Gross, a Woodbridge resident for 20 years.
He’s one of two plaintiffs in a lawsuit recently filed against the town of Woodbridge who wants to see his town be a leader on this issue.
Historically, housing policies like redlining, restrictive covenants and personal racial prejudice made it hard for people of color to access homeownership – a key to generational wealth. While those practices are now outlawed for the most part, wealth inequality among different races is still evident as Black residents in the state have about three times the poverty rate of white residents. And Connecticut has one of the largest gaps in homeownership between Black and white residents.
The plaintiffs argue that people like Thomas continually struggle to find affordable housing by design. They contend that towns like Woodbridge maintain a mostly homogenous community by limiting housing development and in turn limiting who can afford to live there. And that would be illegal, violating Connecticut’s Zoning Enabling Act, Connecticut’s Fair Housing Act and the state’s constitution, the lawsuit states.
“Over the course of the past 20 years, it's become increasingly clear to me and my family that while Woodbridge has tremendous positives, there are also some really important and vital things missing from our community. And first and foremost, it’s diversity,” Gross said.
Gross, a white resident, moved to Woodbridge from New Haven searching for an ideal home and open space – similar to Aleena Thomas. He said his family took their time until it felt right, and in the end it was the yard that sold them. But after moving in, he soon noticed the difference in community, and he said it had a negative impact on his family too.
“Both of our kids expressed concern at the time when they were in school about how most of their fellow students were, frankly, rich kids who looked similar to them and had similar backgrounds. And when they went off to college, they both said, ‘Jeez, you know, it’s a big world out there,’” Gross said.
He said his children inspired him to join the lawsuit because diversity doesn’t just help those outside of Woodbridge, but also those already in the town. Research shows that children in integrated schools tend to do well academically and have a better understanding of the world around them.
For Gross, he said his favorite part about Woodbridge is the open space. He’s spent countless days in his front yard playing badminton, throwing science birthday parties for his kids and more. He hopes more people are able to enjoy those same things in Woodbridge if the lawsuit is successful.
How did we get here?
The lawsuit is a last resort for addressing the town’s zoning regulations after some of the plaintiffs pushed to change local zoning in 2020. The plaintiffs wanted two things:
- Change zoning regulations to allow a four-unit home on a lot they purchased that was zoned for a single-family home
- Allow similar low-density housing in all residential areas of the town without the need for a zoning commission public hearing as long as it follows the public health code and all bulk requirements for a single-family home
The argument was that if the land can support an eight-bedroom single-family home, for example, why not a building with four two-bedroom apartments?
The applicants said the zoning change could signal the start of helping lower-income families afford to live there. The town’s residential areas are zoned for single-family homes with minimum lot sizes between .92 and 1.83 acres – that could be about the size of two football fields, according to Desegregate CT. Duplexes are allowed but need special permission from the town.
Housing advocates argue that larger lot sizes make housing harder to afford. As of last year, less than 2%of homes in town, or 41 units, were deemed affordable by the state. Meanwhile, New Haven had over 18,000 units, or 33% of its housing, deemed affordable.
A report by Open Communities Alliance found that the New Haven region needed more than 25,000 additional affordable housing units to meet the need. Under that report, Woodbridge would be responsible for contributing 501 to 1,000 affordable units to help the larger region meet the demand.
The application set in motion seven lengthy public hearings and resistance from some Woodbridge residents. Opponents said the application didn’t appreciate the town’s rural character, that claims of racism were offensive and that even if the town wanted to, it didn’t have proper sewer and water infrastructure, according to written comments.
The town tried to compromise with the applicants throughout the process. But applicants claim the proposal was ideal in their eyes.
The town ultimately denied the proposal as written, in part, over environmental concerns like sewer and water infrastructure.
Is lack of public water and sewer infrastructure a fair argument?
Most of Connecticut’s towns lack public sewer and water infrastructure, unlike bigger cities. That means most residential properties rely on private wells and septic systems. The town argued that expanding public sewer and water wasn’t feasible, and traditional waste models, like septic systems and leach fields, couldn’t support multifamily housing.
Steven Trinkaus disagrees. He’s a civil engineer and land development consultant who testified on the proposal and said systems are modern enough to support density.
“It’s not like building an apartment, you know, a big square building in the middle of a single-family neighborhood. I really thought the concept had a lot of merit,” he said.
How much capacity a lot can bear is determined by the qualities of the soil, he added. So if it can support a single-family home with multiple rooms, it could also support an apartment with the same number of total bedrooms but divided between more units while not overstepping the state’s public health code.
“Suitability of any parcel of land is really dictated by the soils on the property. You know, and I can’t make dirt, I can only observe what Mother Nature left,” Trinkaus added.
And because one lot can support it, it doesn’t mean the same will apply next door. Trinkaus said that each lot would have to be tested and comply with the public health code requirements but that having fewer zoning restrictions from the start would make development easier.
“Systems that are designed in accordance with the code and installed in accordance with all the rules today are simply not going to break and will support multifamily housing,” he added.
Yet the argument of insufficient infrastructure continues to halt developments, and not just in Woodbridge.
“All kinds of environmental arguments are weaponized against the development of housing that is more affordable,” said Erin Boggs with Open Communities Alliance, one of the organizations that submitted the initial zoning change application and a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in August. “And that’s unfortunate because we need to protect our environment, but there are many ways in which practices that are being protected actually hurt the environment in a much more serious way.”
Boggs said zoning that only allows single-family homes encourages sprawl, which hurts the environment and taxpayers.
Plaintiffs, including Boggs, hope the lawsuit will have statewide and national implications, as nearly every major U.S. city effectively bans apartments in at least 70% of residential areas.
Woodbridge’s land use analyst said the town had “no comment” on the lawsuit, and the law firm representing the town did not reply to a request for comment. But the firm representing the town filed a response to the lawsuit stating it lacked standing.
Back in Derby, Aleena Thomas continues the housing search. She said she’s viewed about 20 units since the summer, mainly while her children are at extracurricular activities.
“I have two teenage boys, so I can’t live anywhere. I have to be in a good neighborhood. And it’s not just for them, for my girls too. And for me,” Thomas said.
But being a one-income household doesn’t make it any easier as rents increase across the state, she added. She’s determined to finish school and get a degree in criminal justice, but that takes time.
As Thomas continues scrolling through available units online, she thinks back to how she ended up in Derby. She said poor housing conditions had pushed her to a hotel for more than six months prior to finding the unit. Thomas knew her home in Derby wasn’t ideal, but she figured it was the best she could get, she said. But this time around, Thomas refuses to settle.
“I probably really don’t want to locate in New Haven. We’ve always lived in the Valley. So we don’t really have to worry about the problems that they have in the inner city. And my children are not used to being exposed to that. But it looks like that’s gonna be my only choice,” Thomas said.
While rents are more affordable in New Haven, only about 10% of units have four or more bedrooms.
Thomas said she’s glad there are efforts to encourage more affordable housing in her region even though it may not help her directly.
In the meantime, the clock is ticking. Her landlord filed an eviction notice earlier this year for nonpayment of rent. It was dismissed as a misunderstanding, but she feels that another notice to quit might be on the way if she doesn’t find something soon. But she remains positive.
“I’m not going to settle,” Thomas said. “I’m going to take my time because something will pop up.”
