CANTON — The town is considering creating an affordability requirement for new residential developments in an attempt to increase the number of affordable units in town.
Under the proposal, 15 percent of all units in proposed housing developments would have to be income restricted.
Because Canton has recently seen rapid increases in new market rate high-density residential development, the Planning and Zoning Commission is concerned about how this rapid increase could negatively affect the town’s ratio of affordable housing inventory, wrote Neil Pade, the town planner, in an email to CT Insider.
Currently, Canton has a stock of affordable units that amounts to around 8 percent of the total housing in the municipality. That's under the state-mandated 10 percent, per statute 8-30g, in which developers can appeal a town’s decision to deny a housing development with an affordability component if less than 10 percent of the town’s housing stock is designated affordable.
Additionally, many of the existing deed restrictions on current affordable housing units have expiration dates, which would further reduce this inventory, Pade wrote.
"As a result, the Commission is seeking to implement a regulation intended to help maintain the current balance," he wrote.
And the concern about falling behind 8-30g's 10 percent goal has been a common topic at Planning and Zoning Commission meetings throughout the year.
"There’s a lot of demand to build residential housing in Canton — I think that’s great — but we want that to get us toward our goal," PZC member Michael Vogel said at a July 26 meeting. "I think 15 percent gets us toward our goal."
Nathaniel Jarvie, the assistant town planner, wrote in a report to the PZC earlier this year saying that while multifamily dwellings in Canton have increased, the vast majority of land remaining for new development is zoned for additional single-family homes on large lots.
“Some consideration should be given to potential standards that would promote, and or require, the inclusion of affordable housing units when possible,” Jarvie wrote in the memo.
And this 15 percent requirement is not intended to increase development, Pade wrote, but rather "increase the number of affordable-housing units created at the time market rate units are created through existing development interests."
Residents will have an opportunity to give their feedback on the proposal at a public hearing on Sept. 20.
But Canton resident Jane Latus, president of the citizen's group Canton Advocates for Responsible Expansion (CARE), said that she doesn’t expect there to be much controversy at the hearing.
Latus said that the group was in support of this new requirement, along with most people she knew. “I haven't even seen one negative comment about it,” she said.
She said that from what she could tell, the PZC seemed concerned with potentially having less say over the design and the size, and location of applications for new developments while Canton wasn’t at the 10 percent.
"By requiring a certain threshold of future development be deed-restricted affordable, this would allow the town to catch up to this threshold and/or not fall further behind," Jarvie wrote.
Latus also brought up how the recent developments in Canton did not have an affordability component.
"We're going in the wrong direction," she said. "So that's the other concern of the commission and and also of CARE and residents, overall."
Jarvie also discussed in his memo that adding new, non-affordable dwelling units will decrease the percentage of current affordable housing stock. He did not respond to a request for comment.
And that's why Vogel thinks it's appropriate to put the requirement on the developers of multi-unit housing, he said at the July meeting.
"They are bringing us further away from that goal," Vogel said. "We’re going to be adding a lot of units that are not affordable units and our percentage is going down."
And while Latus said she wasn't concerned about this amendment being a deterrent to development, that aspect is something that the PZC is thinking about, and will likely be discussed further, Pade wrote.
"Adding a requirement that takes away a number of market rate units will certainly affect the pro forma of a development proposal," he wrote. "A potential result could be a reduction in market interests to those that specialize in financing and constructing housing developments with an affordability component, or perhaps, development groups large enough to absorb costs associated with constructing and managing affordability components."
But Pade emphasized that this proposal was intended to be a temporary measure in response to growing development pressures, that aims to ultimately give the PZC more time to consider how to address the community's housing needs under current market conditions.
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