In a state with sky-high rents, city and state officials joined together Tuesday to announce a pilot program to turn blighted properties into affordable homes.
With Hartford and state contributing $2 million each, officials will spend $4 million in a new program to transform 18 blighted properties across the city. The properties cover multiple neighborhoods, including the West End, Parkville, and Asylum Hill, among others.
Many of the properties have been abandoned for years, some as long as 20 or 30 years, and foreclosed by the city of Hartford, which owns all of them.
“They’ve been sources of blight and sources of crime, but we want them to be sources of hope,” said Mayor Arunan Arulampalam.
At 23%, Hartford’s homeownership rate is the lowest in the state as 77% of residents are renting their properties. That compares to 70% homeownership in West Hartford and 80% in Glastonbury, Arulampalam said. In his own neighborhood in Frog Hollow, within walking distance of the state Capitol, the homeownership rate is only 7%, Arulampalam said.
Hartford City Hall.
The city-owned properties would be sold to developers for $1 with various deed restrictions, and then they would be sold to owner-occupied residents where the average mortgage would be an estimated $1,500 to $1,700 per month. That total, Arulampalam said, is the same as the rent for many apartments in his neighborhood. The purchases would be limited only to households that earn up to 120% of the median income in the area. For low-income residents considering damaged properties, obtaining a mortgage from a bank has often been nearly impossible, officials said.
Working with the Metropolitan District Commission, city officials received a list of the properties that have sewage connections so that development could proceed quickly. Under a best-case scenario, ground could be broken in the spring, and the first residents could be in their new homes by the fall.
Gov. Ned Lamont, who stood near the mayor during a news conference at Hartford City Hall, said he enjoys working with the mayor because words turn into action.
“In this business, ideas are cheap,” Lamont told reporters. “I like people who get it done. Arunan gets it done.”
Noting that housing prices in some areas of the state have increased by 30% to 50% in the past five years, Lamont said, “The need is great. We’ve got the resources. We’re putting our money where our mouth is to make sure that we can make a difference for people and give them a chance to have a stake in their community – and that starts with homeownership.”
With the wealth gap growing wider in Connecticut, Lamont said it is important for the state government to provide funding for first-time homeowners in a low-income city like Hartford.
“It is a travesty to have vacant properties causing blight in neighborhoods when these lots could be used to support much-needed housing for families and young adults, especially for those who dream of owning their first home,” Lamont said. “I applaud Mayor Arulampalam for identifying these lots that can be brought back to life, and my administration will continue partnering with his office to build more owner-occupied housing opportunities in Hartford.”
Statewide
Affordable housing has been a highly controversial topic at the state Capitol, where lawmakers have been trying to solve the problem for years. After a new bill was passed this year by both chambers of the legislature, Lamont vetoed the measure after a strong outcry from mayors and first selectmen across the state. After months of talks with local officials, the legislature passed a new version that Lamont signed into law.
One of the biggest trends in housing has been converting commercial properties into apartments. In Simsbury, a developer has proposed knocking down a Chili’s restaurant and multiple storefronts in order to build as many as 300 apartments in a commercial area. In Farmington, a developer moved forward with a plan to convert the former 381-room Marriott hotel off Interstate 84 into more than 250 apartments.
In a high-cost state, officials say that 25% of renters are spending more than 50% of their income in order to live in their home – far beyond the traditional recommended maximum of 30% of gross monthly income for housing costs.
Another key element in the new law concerns parking. Democrats wanted to relax parking requirements in order to spur development, saying that the number of units is often decided based on the number of parking spaces.
In the original bill that Lamont vetoed, lawmakers voted to eliminate mandatory minimum parking requirements in developments with 24 units or less in order to make it easier to build more housing. That number was lowered to 16 in the new law, meaning that developments beyond 16 units would need to provide parking.
Through the 1990s and up to 2007, Connecticut saw in the neighborhood of 10,000 housing permits per year before a sharp drop off. By 2010, the number hovered around 3,000 and slowly increased. In 2024, state Department of Economic and Community Development data shows, there were 6,840 permits for housing.
While the state’s housing shortage reaches all ages and incomes from low-paid workers and recent college graduates looking for an apartment to elderly widows looking to sell longtime homes as local property taxes increase, Lamont says part of the need for more housing is that more people are now living alone.
“When we were growing up, 10% of people lived alone,” Lamont, 71, told The Courant recently in an interview. “Now, it’s about 30%. People marry a lot later, and they live a lot longer.”
In recent decades, the demographics have shifted sharply as elderly residents are living longer than in the past. U.S. Census data that was released in 2023 showed that nearly 28% of American households had only one person, which represented a jump of nearly four times from 1940 at 7.7%. The trend has continued to increase in each decade for the past 80 years.
With those shifts, more apartments and homes are needed in Connecticut even as the overall population is not skyrocketing.
Christopher Keating can be reached at [email protected]