State lawmakers and housing officials recently gathered at a vacant parking lot outside an abandoned multi-family home on Brook Street in Hartford.
They met to discuss a new program that would transform vacant lots in the city into ownership opportunities. Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said the hope is to increase homeownership rates among "Black and Brown" residents.
“We have all these vacant lots. This creates a gap financing to turn lots like this into home ownership, and that's our plan here in the city of Hartford,” Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said.
The pilot program will be based on the bipartisan federal Neighborhood Homes Investment Act. The Act creates a new federal tax credit for the development and renovation of one to four-family housing in distressed neighborhoods.
The plan calls for local nonprofits and developers to renovate or build homes. They will then be sold to residents at an affordable price of 120% of the area median income (AMI) or below, Arulampalam said.
“We need to build a stock of housing for our residents to own, to be able to cut off that cycle of consistent reliance on rental housing in this city, consistent reliance on out-of-state landlords,” Arulampalam said. “And to be able to allow families to build generational wealth for themselves and pass it on to their kids.”
In the coming weeks, Hartford will establish a vacant lot task force to identify locations for redevelopment.
Increasing homeownership can also lead to a decrease in crime. In Hartford’s Clay Arsenal neighborhood, Arulampalam gave insight into how a home on Mather Street, redeveloped by Hartford Land Bank in 2023, improved the neighborhood.
“For many years before, that was one of the most dangerous streets in our city,” Arulampalam said. “In 2022 the year before this was built, two people lost their lives just on this block. Two lives lost in our city. On this block since that property has come up, there's not been a single homicide on this street. And that is the kind of investment that we're making today.”
The homeownership program was funded with $2 million from the state and an additional $2 million from Hartford.
The state funding is part of the recently launched CT Home Funds, a combination of three state housing programs aimed at increasing homeownership affordability and affordable home construction.
Gov. Ned Lamont said the mayor took initiative to make the vision behind this program a reality for Hartford residents.
“It's not always guys sitting in the Capitol building just dreaming up ideas. It's your mayor coming in to see me about six months ago and saying, ‘Let me tell you what we did with the land bank in Hartford. Let me tell you how it made a difference in people's lives, taking these blighted properties or a vacant lot and turning it into a home. We need a little bit of gap financing. I think the state can help us out,’” Lamont said.
Arunan Arulampalam's father-in-law is Gregory B. Butler, who is a member of the Board of Trustees of Connecticut Public.
