SEN. OSTEN, EASTERN CT LEGISLATORS PUSH FOR RE-WRITING THE STATE’S ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY MAP

State Senator Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) is leading a bipartisan push by more than a dozen eastern Connecticut lawmakers to re-write the state’s ‘opportunity map’ which is used by state agencies to determine where scarce housing funds should go – and most of them currently go to ‘high opportunity’ Fairfield County and not to dozens of low- or moderate-opportunity towns in eastern Connecticut.

Sen. Osten has co-sponsored Senate Bill 1128, “AN ACT CONCERNING THE CONNECTICUT HOUSING FINANCE AUTHORITY CONNECTICUT OPPORTUNITY MAP,” which requires  the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority to update not only the Connecticut Opportunity Map but also the underlying policies in creating the map.

The bill is just the latest attempt by eastern Connecticut lawmakers to level the playing field when it comes to the state distribution of tax credits for builder to construct more affordable housing in the state.

“We must sound like a broken record making the same argument over and over and over again, but it’s time for Connecticut economic policy to stop hobbling those cities and town who want to get ahead, and who need to get ahead, when it comes to affordable housing. We just can’t keep rewarding the same Gold Coast towns because they’ve already got it all and now they’re getting even more,” Sen. Osten said. “Every Connecticut town needs affordable housing, including eastern Connecticut. Just ask any of the several hundred defense subcontractors in the region who can’t get enough people to work for them because there’s no place to live. That’s got to change.”

Both The Connecticut Housing Finance Authority (CHFA) and the state Department of Housing (DOH) use the Connecticut Opportunity Map to determine financing opportunities offered by CHFA and DOH.  According to the DOH, opportunity mapping is a way to look at neighborhood resources and outcomes such as school performance, poverty concentration, safety and more. “Where you live affects your access to opportunity — and this can be mapped … The goal of opportunity mapping is to identify opportunity-rich and opportunity isolated communities. With a basic understanding of the geography of opportunity we can then better determine who has access to opportunity resources and how to remedy opportunity inequality.”

Eastern Connecticut towns score poorly on the opportunity map. The entire eastern third of Connecticut – essentially from Union and Ashford down through Windham, Lebanon and Salem to East Lyme, and every town to the east – are labelled as low- or moderate-opportunity options for new housing funds.

But nearly all of Fairfield County – outside of Bridgeport – is labelled as high opportunity.

In June 2021, Sen. Osten and a group of Democratic lawmakers from eastern Connecticut secured a one-month delay and a review of a proposed change CHFA to its new rules governing how the state distributes millions of dollars in tax credits for affordable housing development.

CHFA has long emphasized opportunity score when deciding what affordable housing projects will receive state tax credits, thereby lowering the cost for builders. Cities and towns are graded according to the degree of ‘opportunity’ in the surrounding community, usually defined as a town’s school rating, its poverty rate, its proximity to community colleges, and its jobs-to-population ratio. A high opportunity score is desirable, and a low opportunity score makes it virtually impossible to receive state grants for affordable housing construction.

But the next month, CHFA approved its opportunity map as proposed. Under CHFA’s scoring system, only 1% of the towns in Tolland, Windham and New London Counties – about a third of Connecticut’s land mass – qualify as “high” opportunity areas, compared to 20% statewide.