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Town After Town, Residents Are Fighting Affordable Housing in Connecticut
New York Times via Yahoo ^ | September 6, 2022 | Lisa Prevost

Posted on 09/06/2022 9:37:06 AM PDT by grundle

In the town of Fairfield, Connecticut, nearly 2,400 residents have signed a petition opposing a project proposed for downtown that could bring 19 units of affordable housing.

In nearby New Canaan, homeowners have raised about $84,000 for a legal fund to fight a proposed apartment complex downtown on Weed Street that would include 31 rent-restricted units for households with moderate incomes.

And in Greenwich, a developer recently withdrew an application to build a project that would include 58 apartments priced below market rate, after residents living in nearby luxury condominiums objected

Throughout Fairfield County, Connecticut, local residents and elected officials are seeking to block large housing projects that include units affordable to low- and moderate-income households

The restrictive zoning “disparately harms Black and Latino households, and deepens economic and racial segregation in the area,”

That sort of suburban antipathy to density has contributed to a severe housing shortage in Connecticut, especially at the low- to moderate-income range

many people who work in the towns cannot afford to live

Affordability is a major deterrent to the many teachers in Greenwich who would like to live in town, said Aaron Hull, a longtime educator in town. Hull, who lives in Norwalk, said he and his wife had periodically contemplated moving their family to Greenwich, which he views as a “phenomenal community,” but couldn’t find anything within their price range.

His daily commute on Interstate 95, while only 14 miles, “can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes,” he said. “That seat time takes its toll.”

(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: connecticut; ghetto; housind; housing; rentals
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To: pierrem15

You forgot graffiti and drugs.

There is/was/proposed a requirement that new housing projects had to have low income units as a percentage of the total.

Nobody wants the poor living in their wealthy neighborhood. I sure don’t


21 posted on 09/06/2022 10:07:34 AM PDT by Ouderkirk (The modern world demands that we approve what it should not even dare ask us to tolerate.)
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To: grundle

Democrats don’t care about citizens or votes or petitions. You’d think these idiots in Connecticut would know that by now.


22 posted on 09/06/2022 10:10:55 AM PDT by MercyFlush (☭☭☭ Soviet Russia must be destroyed. ☭☭☭)
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To: Governor Dinwiddie

I knew a guy who grew up in government housing in Greenwich, CT.
It was the only “project” in town back in the 1960s/70s.

He showed it to me on Google maps once. Typical ugly 15 story brick apartment buildings. The houses directly behind it were worth well over a million(even ten years ago). He also showed me where the Bushes had lived, along with all the other Blue bloods.

He was the poorest kid in town. He was a looper(caddie) at the Greenwich Country Club. He was also one of the only white boys in that project.


23 posted on 09/06/2022 10:17:31 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
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To: grundle

Connecticut has an “affordable housing” law that effectively overrules all zoning and other land use restrictions for housing developments that reserve a certain percentage of their units for “affordable housing”. The law kicks in whenever a town’s housing stock is not sufficiently affordable, a measurement set such that is impossible for any reasonably prosperous suburb to achieve. So developers are rushing to build large developments in absurdly inappropriate locations. As I understand it, only safety is a grounds for stopping these developments but even safety is written so as to not include traffic. The ruling Marxists in Hartford love this law so it will never change. It is doing what it is intended to.


24 posted on 09/06/2022 10:18:11 AM PDT by Stingray51 ( )
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To: grundle
For 20+ years i lived in a nice middle class suburb. During my time there it changed from genuinely middle class to McMansion Volvo,Global Warming class. Just before I moved out a proposal was made for a small "affordable housing" development on a small piece of open land.

The town went berserk! "Think of the children" was the cry. Bumper stickers and yard signs everywhere you looked. Turns out...the thing was never built.

And more recently a similar project was proposed in Weston,Massachusetts...a Boston suburb that's listed as the richest,and one of the most "progressive,in the state. Again,driving through today there are yard signs everywhere "No To The Weston Whopper!"

Leftists are phonies...and rich leftists are the worst.

25 posted on 09/06/2022 10:24:38 AM PDT by Gay State Conservative (Covid Is All About Mail In Ballots)
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To: uranium penguin

I know a guy who works at Goldman Sachs and lives in Darien about a mile from LI Sound.
He also has a house on Nantucket.

When he went into the office on Park Ave it was a 5 minute ride to the train station. Then an hour train ride to Grand Central. Another 15 walk from there.

He was working from Nantucket the last couple years. He is some kind of Euro currency trader/arbitrage something. Lived in Frankfort for a few years back when he was first hired 25 years ago.


26 posted on 09/06/2022 10:27:29 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
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To: PapaBear3625

The Talk: Nonblack Version
Teach your children well.
https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/the-talk-nonblack-version/

The column that got John Derbyshire fired from National Review. Too much truth.


27 posted on 09/06/2022 10:31:20 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: grundle

It’s a tough question what to do with the homeless, or for that matter anyone that’s making less than a statistically based, one size fits all, minimum income needed to keep the rest of us from feeling guilty.

On the other hand, the rest of us don’t like to see our money thrown away because we don’t any resultant improvement.


28 posted on 09/06/2022 10:31:24 AM PDT by cymbeline
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To: IYAS9YAS

Another extremely consistent pattern:

When “affordable housing” (aka rent-subsidized apartments) arrive, crime goes up. I have witnessed it in literally every area I have lived.

And no - I’m not against “affordable housing” - but I am against endless tax dollars subsidizing crime, bad behavior, poor decisions, and corruption.


29 posted on 09/06/2022 10:37:01 AM PDT by TheBattman (Democrats-Progressives-Marxists-Socialists - redundant labels.)
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To: Sacajaweau

The wiring and AC outside units are stolen here. They went to all PVC plumbing years ago for that very reason..............


30 posted on 09/06/2022 10:37:14 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.....................)
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To: Westbrook

yep


31 posted on 09/06/2022 10:37:26 AM PDT by TheBattman (Democrats-Progressives-Marxists-Socialists - redundant labels.)
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To: Gay State Conservative

The big thing here in southern NH is cluster developments.
After the real estate boom in the 1980s all of these towns west of Nashua/Manchester put in zoning codes to limit growth.
Most rural towns require 200’ of road frontage and 1-3 acres for a single family home. This allows for a drilled well and septic to be installed on the lot. It slowed growth.

About twenty years ago they started allowing the total acreage to be considered as jointly owned. So, now a builder will petition the planning board to accept this development method. They build ten houses real close together. They put in a community septic system and a few drilled wells to service all ten houses. This saves the developer fixed site costs like the amount of pavement/piping/utility costs. Then instead of selling the houses as single family homes. They are technically freestanding “condos”. The association owns the land surrounding where the houses are actually built.

They built a small subdivision down the street from me about a mile into the adjacent town just like that. They built ten houses on twenty acres. All the houses are on a street about 300’ long about 20’ apart. The land around them is still woods.


32 posted on 09/06/2022 10:43:54 AM PDT by woodbutcher1963
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To: grundle

I live in an upscale, suburban, sleepy and yes, mostly white suburb in No. California. 3-4 years ago, all of the various do-gooder lib gov’t mandates as to affordable housing gradually engendered a low-income project here and there sprinkled throughout the town.

The local crime reporting used to be a very short column in the local rag. Never was there any physical violence, talking maybe a bicycle theft once in a while. Since then, we have had multiple carjackings, home invasions, and nobody can receive a package delivery without the item being stolen from their front porch. Any loose bicycle is immediately stolen, and garden tools while the homeowner leaves their garage door open for mere minutes and traipses around the back of the house to get a rake.


33 posted on 09/06/2022 10:45:06 AM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Apoplectic is where we want them)
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To: grundle

typical NIMBY reaction....


34 posted on 09/06/2022 10:48:20 AM PDT by Still a Patriot
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To: uranium penguin

” While at the same time, probably 90% of the parents of those kids spends 3hrs+ per day commuting into NYC to be able to afford living in those towns.”
GREAT point.
I hope people remember and use it on the whiners


35 posted on 09/06/2022 10:48:36 AM PDT by RWGinger (LGB)
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To: grundle

Oh yeah, rent-restricted housing.
That should really improve the quality of life in some bucolic Connecticut suburb.

Kinda like the forced ‘diversity’ in some neighborhoods & schools did back in the 1960s & 1970s.


36 posted on 09/06/2022 10:52:59 AM PDT by Tupelo (Don't under estimate the Republicans ability to f*** things up)
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To: Gay State Conservative

https://www.google.com/search?q=No+To+The+Weston+Whopper!%22&client=ms-android-att-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#ip=1

I had to ‘google’ it - too funny...


37 posted on 09/06/2022 10:53:05 AM PDT by dakine
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To: Red Badger

Carson City, Nevada just approved such a complex.

It will not be good news for those around it.


38 posted on 09/06/2022 10:53:29 AM PDT by ridesthemiles
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To: uranium penguin

I have come to believe — quite strongly — that one of the most destructive social-economic and cultural trends in the post-WW2 period in the U.S. is that it is now common for people to live and work in different places. The end result is that you have cities like New York or Chicago that turn into dumps because many of the people who work and do business there don’t live there and can’t vote for the government leaders.


39 posted on 09/06/2022 10:53:48 AM PDT by Alberta's Child ("It's midnight in Manhattan. This is no time to get cute; it's a mad dog's promenade.")
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To: DPMD

Affordable housing for thee, but not for me.


40 posted on 09/06/2022 11:03:40 AM PDT by Ken H (Trump /DeSantis)
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