State lawmakers and housing advocates spent hours bickering during a public hearing of the Connecticut Housing Committee Thursday.
During public testimony over more than a dozen bills and proposed bills, the best ways to increase affordable housing across the state was debated.
Democratic State Sen. Bob Duff, who represents Norwalk and Darien, and Republican State Sen. Rob Sampson, who represents Cheshire, Prospect, Southington, Waterbury and Wolcott, brought up national politics.
While Duff and Sen. Martin Looney testified in favor of Senate Bill 12, a vague call for more equitable housing statewide, Sampson said undocumented immigrants are partly to blame for Connecticut’s housing crisis.
“It's a matter of fact, you got 100,000 or more extra people in the state that are not even citizens of our country,” Sampson said. “Whether you think that's good policy or not, it is certainly impacting the availability of housing. It has to. Those people have to be living somewhere in the state.”
Duff countered by saying placing a nationwide political lens and targeting undocumented residents is disregarding the broader issue of general poverty in Connecticut.
“We are building housing for the people of this state. So while there are communities that are building housing because they're doing it, again, for the economic reasons and maybe some moral reasons, there are communities that do not want to do it,” Duff said.
Whether relying on incentives or mandates, the state should do what is necessary to increase affordable housing, Duff said.
As the debate veered from local housing to national politics, Sampson spoke in favor of President Donald Trump.
“You'll find over the next several years, the cost of goods and services in this country are going to be kept more in control, because there'll be less government, less wasteful spending, and I would just cheer on President Trump and the DOGE effort, because they're doing Lord's work,” Sampson said.
Topics up for public hearing included a more than $33 million request for homeless service funding, and a bill allowing law enforcement to forcibly remove squatters from buildings and homes.
Eliza Halsey, New Haven’s community services administrator, spoke in favor of the social service funding. The need has expanded beyond cold weather concerns, according to Halsey.
“We've seen our local homeless serving providers actually work to switch the language to extreme weather rather than just cold weather, because we do see people impacted by the heat in the summer, and there are not enough dollars even to fund cold weather,” Halsey said.
The public hearing, which was designed to bring lawmakers and advocates together to discuss potential solutions to help homeless service providers across the state, snowballed into political sparring. Often the debates went without reference to specific bills, rather a discussion of blame.
