The town of Fairfield is pausing new affordable housing creation for four years after the moratorium was approved by the state Department of Housing.
Fairfield First Selectman Bill Gerber, welcomed the pause and said Connecticut's affordable housing requirements are too restrictive.
State law requires municipalities to make at least 10% of their housing stock affordable. The law also allows developers of various affordable housing projects to override local zoning laws in communities that don’t meet the affordable housing mandate.
This means developers can construct large apartment complexes as long as they have a portion of affordable units. Gerber said this isn’t fair to homebuyers.
“I don't know what the average sales price is now, but it's got to be upwards of almost a million dollars at this point,” Gerber said. “They're really leveraging up to buy a home and then to have a big complex go in, like right next door, can be pretty upsetting.”
Connecticut affordable housing requirements place too much of a burden on communities that fall below the state mandate of having at least 10% of all housing stock deemed affordable, Gerber said.
The moratorium will be in place until April 2029. To secure the moratorium, Fairfield had to prove at least 2% of the town's nearly 22,000 housing units are documented as Affordable Housing Unit Equivalents (HUE). That means Fairfield would need about 440 HUE to meet the affordable minimum. The town’s application documented 462 HUE.
Connecticut’s affordable housing law mandates towns that lack the 10% affordable housing requirement to approve applications for housing developments that want to make at least 30% of the units affordable.
Fairfield made several zoning and policy changes in the last decade that increased affordable housing, Gerber said.
Through recent years, Fairfield’s affordable housing rate increased from 2% to about 3%, Gerber said.
Fairfield also increased the affordable unit minimum for large apartment complexes from the state-required 10%, up to 12%.
Additionally, a Fairfield Affordable Housing Trust Fund was established in 2018 along with a zoning law designed to increase the rate of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), also known as in-law apartments.
“With the moratorium, we can now have more say over where housing developments go, and try to push developers to areas where we would like to see more development in a forum that looks more attractive, maybe doesn't put as much strain on the infrastructure,” Gerber said.
The moratorium was a long time coming and many years in the making, Fairfield Director of Community and Economic Development Mark Barnhart said.
A number of projects will be “grandfathered in,” as the project applications, which include affordable housing, were submitted before the moratorium went into effect.
“While the moratorium represents a significant milestone, we know that it is only temporary, and that our work continues,” Barnhart said.
“Further, we know that the need for more attainable housing options has never been greater. But, the good news on both counts is that we have a number of projects already approved or under construction that will allow us to continue to make progress on meeting our housing needs and qualifying for a subsequent moratorium.”
