Chris Powell: Conn. isn’t prepared for greater prosperity; sneaky ‘public-benefits’ charges
Millstone Nuclear-Power Plant, in Waterford, Conn.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
When federal census data showed Connecticut's population increasing by about 57,000 in 2021 and 2022, Gov. Ned Lamont construed it as great news, evidence of the state's prosperity under his administration, a remarkable contrast with the population losses of nearby states.
But the other day the U.S. Census Bureau acknowledged that the population increase report was a mistake and that Connecticut probably experienced a population loss of 13,500 during that period.
In a way this may be construed as great too.
For the state has a severe shortage of housing, home prices and rents have been soaring, and homelessness is rising. Experts say the state needs at least 100,000 more housing units just for its current population to be able to live decently. If the state really had gained 57,000 people, it would be under much greater strain.
Connecticut isn't prepared for greater prosperity, and more strain is promised by the increased military contracting coming into the state for which thousands of new workers are needed.
Even if the national economy were entering a recession, Connecticut still would have thousands of inadequately housed people.
Equating construction of inexpensive housing with poverty because of the mess the state has made of its cities, Connecticut has been slow to recognize that its housing policy -- unfriendly if not hostile to new housing -- has been a disaster too.
But the Lamont administration has taken the hint and is proceeding with state government incentives for housing construction. Hartford and New Haven are encouraging apartments and condominiums and are showing that city living can attractive, and a few suburbs are viewing housing proposals more favorably than usual.
It's far from enough but it's a start. If housing initiatives continue for a few more years and state government discourages exclusive zoning and controls spending and taxes, maybe even accurate census data will start showing that more people want to move to Connecticut than leave it for lower-taxed states with milder winters.
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Connecticut has among the highest electric rates in the country, and the big increases imposed last month are painful reminders that the state would have to reduce rates if it would increase its prosperity and population -- or even just maintain its population.
The latest rate increases have two major causes: the decision by the governor and General Assembly to guarantee purchase of the electricity generated by the Millstone nuclear-power plant, in Waterford, as a matter of Connecticut's energy security; and second, the "public benefits" charges that long have been largely hidden in customer electric bills, essentially sales taxes to finance state government programs having little if anything to do with generation and delivery of electricity.
Among the "public benefits" charges is one by which people who pay their electric bills are required to pay as well for people who don't pay but who under state law can't be disconnected during much of the year. Since this charge is a welfare expense, it should be borne by taxpayers generally, not by electricity users particularly.
Indeed, there is no good reason to charge electricity users particularly for any of the "public benefits" hidden in their bills. Insofar as electricity is a necessity of life, taxing it is no more justified than taxing food and medicine would be.
The real justification for financing the "public benefits" from a de-facto sales tax on electricity is that state legislators and governors have liked obscuring the costs of those "benefits" and deceiving the public into thinking that the big, bad electric companies are overcharging. By some estimates 20 percent of the cost of electricity for a typical Connecticut resident results from non-electrical "public benefits" charges.
Members of the General Assembly's Republican minority have been making an issue of this and fortunately have begun pressing it harder. "Public benefits" charges on electricity bills should be eliminated, along with the "public benefits" themselves, or else their costs should be recovered through general taxation or spending cuts elsewhere.
Now who wants to specify the tax increases or spending cuts necessary to get rid of the "public benefits" charges?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years(CPowell@cox.net).
Housing solutions should include thinking small
Tiny homes in Detroit
Photo by Andrew Jameson
Adapted from Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
Exurban/suburban Burrillville, R.I., has admirably been in the forefront of making housing available to people with minimal means. And I particularly like that the town has tried to concentrate new housing in its village centers. This reduces sprawl and makes it easier for people to shop without having to use a car.
Meanwhile, in a national sign of moves to make housing, including owner-occupied dwellings, more affordable, very small houses (some only 400 square feet) are going up in some communities as larger, but still small, houses become increasingly unaffordable to people with low or moderate incomes.
In 2022, the average size of a single-family home in the United States was 2,522 square feet. Although in the past five years American homes have been shrinking a bit, since 1975, they have almost doubled in size. That’s even as the size of families has shrunk, more people are living alone and the population is aging.
It's about time that many more smaller dwellings were built.
Finally, look for more confrontations between state governments that are pressing communities to change zoning ordinances and make other changes to encourage more “affordable” housing construction, especially near public transit and shopping. Consider Milton, Mass., some of which is very affluent, rejecting in a referendum a state mandate meant to promote affordable housing in communities with MBTA lines. The state will yank some state grants to the town unless it swiftly comes into compliance.
Read:
Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don’t See, by Richard D. Kahlenberg
The communities are legal children of the state, and the housing crisis will demand that it compel some of the pull-up-the-bridge towns to change their housing policies. This is not just a matter of fairness. The long-term health of our economy will depend in no small part on adequate housing for the full range of workers and their families.
Maybe there should be a surtax on some vacant urban and suburban land to encourage building housing there.
The 18th Century Suffolk Resolves House, in Milton, now a museum
A new group will address region’s housing shortages
Three-decker housing in Worcester.
The New England Council is pleased to announce the establishment of a new cross-sector Housing Working Group. The new Working Group will bring together council members from various sectors throughout the region to work collaboratively to address the housing shortages plaguing the region.
The New England region faces an unprecedented shortage of housing at all levels – everything from affordable rental units, to middle-income single-family homes. The shortages are having a negative impact on the region’s economy, making it difficult for employers to attract and retain talent, and making the region less attractive for businesses to locate and expand here.
The new Housing Working Group will focus on:
Identifying and supporting federal policy proposals that aim to increase housing supply.
Educating federal policymakers about the impact of the shortages and impediments to solving the crisis.
Fostering collaboration across different sectors and across state lines.
The Working Group is open to any council member who is interested in working on this issue, and will host its first meeting on Thursday, Feb. 15. Council members can register HERE.
If you have any questions about this new initiative, please contact Griffin Doherty, director of Federal Affairs.
Chris Powell: What housing emergency?
In Danbury: Clockwise from top left: Main Street Historic District, The Summit at Danbury, Tarrywile Mansion, Praxair Headquarters, Danbury Municipal Airport, Danbury Fair Mall, David Wooster Monument, Western Connecticut State University, and the Danbury Railway Museum
— Wikipedia
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Maybe the recession that has begun will loosen up Connecticut's housing market, but it will take a while even as the poor get poorer. The housing shortage is already making life desperate for many of the poor. But state government doesn't yet consider it an emergency, not even in the face of what seems about to happen in Danbury.
For the two years of the virus epidemic a former hotel building in Danbury has been operated as a shelter for the homeless by a social-service organization based in Stamford, Pacific House. The organization got state financing to purchase the building for use as a shelter but Danbury's zoning board has refused to approve it. The shelter has stayed in operation only because of one of Gov. Ned Lamont's emergency orders arising from the epidemic, but those orders expire Dec. 28.
The former hotel is adjacent to Interstate 84 and few residences are nearby, so the shelter is no more of a nuisance than the hotel was. While it is far from medical and commercial facilities and thus not the most convenient location for the homeless, Pacific House can bring services to them or help them get where they need to go as they work to gain self-sufficiency.
If state government really cared about the poor and troubled, it would pass a law exempting shelters from zoning regulations just as it has exempted group homes for the mentally handicapped.
Danbury lacks any facility that can accommodate all the people now being housed at the former hotel. Most may be out on the street at the end of the month just as the dead of winter sets in. Surely state government can put aside less essential matters until it solves the emergency housing problem.
Crooked guards
Connecticut's Correction Department lately worsened the state's housing problem. It was inadvertent but predictable.
Since prison guards work in tightly confined spaces and were at more risk of contracting COVID 19, the department used federal epidemic emergency money to let them rent hotel rooms so they might avoid infecting their families.
But, the Connecticut Mirror reports, state auditors found that the program was badly abused. Correction Department employees, the Mirror says, "used the program to book hotel rooms during a wedding, to celebrate New Year's Eve, and to live full-time in the hotels with their families. ... Others booked rooms in multiple hotels on the same days, and at least one correction officer used the program while he was on military leave." Some employees used the program to live in hotels for five months or more.
There were rules again this kind of thing but since this was an emergency, no one was hired to enforce them. Some employees who abused the program suffered short suspensions but it seems that no one was fired or prosecuted.
Of course, much federal emergency money has been defrauded throughout the country, just as it was defrauded by the corrupt city government in West Haven, where more than a million dollars was stolen or misdirected by a City Council aide who was also a state representative.
The lesson seems to be that any emergency's first order of business should be to hire extra auditors.
Another murder despite protective order
Another Connecticut woman who had a protective order was murdered the other week, apparently by the former boyfriend she got the order against. Julie Minogue of Milford was battered to death with an ax after her ex had harassed her with hundreds of text messages. An arrest warrant application for the harasser had been pending, left incomplete, for weeks.
The Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence says there have been 12 intimate partner murders in the state so far this year.
The only way to stop them is to require police, prosecutors, and courts to give priority to domestic threats and violence and to impose heavy penalties upon conviction, even for first offenses. Here too state government is always doing many less important things.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester. (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)
Chris Powell: Amidst the failure to lift the poor, cities need gentrification
Approaching Wooster Square Park, in New Haven. The Wooster Street archway is decorated with a cherry blossom tree, a symbol of New Haven. It’s a reminder of the pleasure and advantages of city life, notes Chris Powell.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Especially in Connecticut, elected officials claim credit for trying to solve the problems they themselves created. It happened again recently with legislation proposed in the General Assembly to require larger municipalities to create "fair rent" commissions with power to cancel or reduce residential rent increases.
Yes, along with housing prices generally, rents have been increasing dramatically since inflation exploded. By some calculations housing has never been more expensive relative to incomes. But the legislation effectively blamed landlords when the rent increases are largely the result of government's own policies.
Impairing the ability of landlords to make money would only discourage boosting the supply of rental housing.
Connecticut policy long has allowed municipal zoning regulations to stunt the housing supply. Like rent control, restrictive zoning subverts the market. If housing was easier to build, supply would grow and prices fall.
A recent state law aims to diminish the exclusivity of suburban zoning, but it is yet to have much effect even as it is prompting anger in some towns.
The housing shortage has bigger underlying problems.
First, people want to have children but don't want to ensure that housing is available nearby for their kids when they start out on their own. Of course, peace and quiet are great but many people want government to provide peace and quiet at the expense of people who don't yet have adequate housing -- to provide peace and quiet through restrictive zoning.
And second, people justifiably want good neighbors. Quite apart from racial and ethnic prejudices, which are fading, good neighbors means that people who will behave decently, pay more in taxes than they consume in government services, and not manifest the pathologies associated with the never-ending poverty and depravity of the cities.
Connecticut's zoning-reform legislation vindicates these concerns insofar as it calls itself "fair share" legislation, confirming that new residents are a burden. Once or twice even the mayors of Hartford and New Haven have been candid about wanting to disperse their poorest residents to the suburbs. Indeed, poverty is no virtue, for with the poor come crime, dependence, and neglected children who wreck schools.
Suburbs sneer at this while city mayors have to cope with it. If government's welfare, education and urban policies were not chronic failures, suburbs might be more welcoming to new residents and to the housing construction Connecticut needs so badly.
All state government has to do is stop manufacturing poverty.
But maybe with the housing legislation Connecticut has been putting too much focus on suburbs. Lately the glorious cherry blossoms in Wooster Square Park, in New Haven, have provided a spectacular reminder of the advantages and potential of city life.
After all, the main problem with cities today is not infrastructure as much as many of the people who live there. A city with "mixed-use development" has great virtues -- commerce, industry, hospitals and medical offices, various kinds of residences, markets, restaurants, churches, theaters, and parks, all within walking distance of each other, with shops and housing often in the same buildings. In such places it is possible not just to live without a car but to be glad to be free of its expense.
Thanks in large part to Yale University, downtown New Haven somewhat sustains this way of life. Downtown Hartford lost it 60 years ago with horribly misguided urban redevelopment. But under the same mayors who would like to export their poor, both cities are waking up, striving to increase middle-class housing downtown or nearby.
Sometimes this effort is scorned as "gentrification," but gentrification is exactly what the cities need. Why is Stamford booming while Bridgeport -- only 23 miles east on the same railroad, highways and coast, with a better harbor and an airport -- sinking in decrepitude and struggling to just keep the lights on downtown?
Maybe it's because, being closer to New York City, housing in Stamford long has tended to be more expensive and so being poor there wasn't as easy as it was and remains in Bridgeport.
The poor can't be deported. So why can't Connecticut ever raise them to the middle class? Why is the decades-long failure to lift them never even officially acknowledged?
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
Bring back this urban starter housing
A three-decker in Cambridge, Mass.
From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com
There’s a very useful article by Aaron Renn in Governing Magazine about how “poor neighborhoods” with lots of owner-occupied dwellings provided a springboard for people to enter the middle class. It sure beats massive, impersonal and often crime-ridden public-housing projects. An example would be those New England neighborhoods of “three-deckers” in places like South Boston. The owners often live on just one floor and rent out the rest of the building – a way to start gaining middle-class wealth.
But, as I’ve noticed in the U.S. cities where I’ve lived – Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Providence – public policies and changing social attitudes have eroded the benefits of this “starter housing’’ for years. Among Mr. Renn’s observations:
“The rise of zoning and ever-stricter building codes … played a role, especially in recent years, preventing the construction of traditional starter neighborhoods.”
“Changing zoning regulations to create more affordable neighborhoods in some of America’s most expensive cities would help establish platforms for upward mobility. …{But} other factors played into making these old neighborhoods what they were. They were high in social capital, characterized by intact married families, and populated with people who possessed the skills needed for building maintenance. These exist today in some immigrant communities, but less so in society at large.’’
(Ah yes, the collapse of marriage and the stability that went with it.)
Policy makers take note, particularly considering a housing-cost crisis that shows few signs of abating.
To read Mr. Renn’s article, please hit this link.
Chris Powell: The hyper-hypocrisies of exclusionary zoning
Minuteman Statue in the exclusive Compo Beach section of the rich Fairfield County, Conn., town of Westport
— Photo by WestportWiki
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Nearly everybody wants some peace and quiet at home, so naturally enough residential real estate is often about exclusivity. "Park-like setting" may be the most appealing part of advertisements for housing, followed closely by location in a successful school district.
Since only the rich can guarantee such housing for themselves with their own funds, buying not only the housing but also the park to go with it, municipalities have used zoning regulations to separate residential from industrial and commercial areas. There is nothing wrong with that. But as Connecticut knows only too well, municipalities also use zoning for exclusion -- to keep people out generally and the poor particularly, since the poor cost government more than they pay in taxes and are disproportionately disruptive.
While exclusive zoning goes too far, Connecticut long has failed to curtail its excesses, and so the suburbs are always producing hypocritical controversies about what should be only ordinary housing development. Such controversies recently broke out in Westport and Vernon.
In Westport a Superior Court judge has overturned the Planning and Zoning Commission's rejection of an 81-unit apartment complex that neighbors say will diminish safety in the neighborhood. The neighbors insist that they are not against less-expensive housing or more people from minority groups in town; they just don't want such housing near them, what with the extra traffic and all.
The argument is similar in Vernon, where neighbors petitioned against a plan to build 56 apartments on a street with both single-family and multifamily housing. Besides raising traffic and safety concerns, the neighbors contended that there is already too much multifamily housing in the area.
Too much multifamily housing for whom? There's not too much for people looking for housing in a state whose housing costs are already high and long have been pricing people out of many towns. Indeed, while homeowners celebrate rising property values, renters and people seeking to set up their own households don't, any more than homeowners celebrate rising prices for food and medical insurance. For housing is a necessity of life just as those other things are.
The more that is claimed by necessities from personal incomes, the less discretionary income people have and the more they are just surviving, not living.
The traffic argument against housing is always weak if not ridiculous, since of course there can be no new housing without traffic, and the housing in which the opponents of new housing live increased traffic itself.
People raise traffic concerns about housing only when they are already comfortably settled. Nobody thinks of himself as constituting too much traffic and nobody declines to move into an area because he will be increasing traffic for others.
Until the radical environmentalists take over and impose brutal population controls like China's, population and economic growth will continue to go hand in hand in the United States and require more housing. Connecticut can't achieve economic class and racial integration without it.
More housing in the suburbs isn't the only way of achieving economic class and racial integration. That also might be achieved by acknowledging the failure of Connecticut's welfare and urban policies to elevate the poor and members of racial minorities and improve the cities in which most of them live. Then the middle class might want to return.
But the interests that are invested in the failure of welfare and urban policy and the failure of the cities themselves remain too influential in state politics. If the cities were not perpetually poor -- essentially poverty factories operated by government and controlling the tens of thousands of votes cast by both the poor and the legions ministering to them at government expense -- Connecticut's majority political party would lose its decisive pluralities in state elections.
Government has much less patronage to bestow when the private sector is prosperous and people are well educated, skilled, and self-sufficient. As a political matter, that can't be allowed.
So for the time being Connecticut might do well just to reflect that it’s a good thing the Indians never had zoning. Otherwise there'd never have been any integration and there would be no one to lose money at their casinos.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester.
David Warsh: Home buyers reel from high-tech flippers
SOMERVILLE, Mass.
A story of great significance broke on the front pages of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal last week. It had nothing to do with Donald Trump
On June 20, in: “The Future of Housing Rises in Phoenix,” Ryan Dezember and Peter Rudegeair reported in the WSJ, “high-tech flippers such as Zillow are using algorithms to reshape the housing market.” Their story began: “Armed with loads of cash and the latest in machine learning, investors are reshaping the $26 trillion market for U.S. residential real estate, starting in Phoenix, the petri dish for America’s housing experiments.”\
On June 21, in the NYT: “As Investors Flip Markets, Home Buyers Are Reeling,” Ben Casselman and Conor Dougherty, added some facts. Investors bought one out of five starter homes that were sold last year, meaning those in the lower third of the market. In the most frenzied markets, they wrote, “investors bought close half of the most affordable homes sold last year, and as much as a quarter of all single-family homes.”
On the same day, in the WSJ, Laura Kusisto followed up with: “Investors Buy Homes at Unparalleled Rate.” Big private-equity firms, real estate speculators and others had a powerful advantage over families with seeking a home to live in, she wrote: they often offer to pay all cash. “Their interest poses a challenge for millennials and other first-time buyers.”
Starter homes apparently have become an asset class for Silicon Valley startups and institutional investors. Housing policy issues – not just programmatic flipping but zoning and rent control as well – are on their way to the top of America’s domestic political agenda.
David Warsh, an economic historian and a long-time columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economic principals.com, where this column first appeared.