A measure to require landlords to give a reason when they evict renters — a controversial proposal in housing policy — is likely to be center stage during the upcoming legislative session, key lawmakers and advocates said.
Legislators said they expect to vote on bills to support the homeless population and modest zoning-related proposals, like those related to accessory-dwelling units, during this year’s short session following the longer 2025 session when housing growth and major zoning changes were at the forefront. Last year’s debate culminated in a sweeping housing bill, a veto from Gov. Ned Lamont and a special session to pass a new law to encourage more housing in Connecticut’s towns.
This year’s session ends May 6.
“I think the goal is to figure out how to keep people housed,” said Housing Committee co-chair Rep. Antonio Felipe, D-Bridgeport. “We need to figure out how to mitigate the homelessness issue, do some prevention around it, and also make sure that renters aren’t taken out of their homes for small reasons.”
Newly appointed Planning and Development Committee ranking member Rep. Irene Haines, R-East Haddam, said she doesn’t expect big bills this session. “We might see some bills come back from last session. But with the major housing bill that went through last session, this session should be quieter,” Haines said in a statement.
No fault-evictions
During the past several sessions, lawmakers have debated bills that would change the state’s eviction law for tenants who live in larger apartment complexes and largely end no-fault evictions, also known as lapse-of-time evictions, which typically occur at the end of a lease. Efforts to pass this legislation have fallen flat.
Renters say these types of evictions are often used as retaliation against tenants who unionize or complain about living conditions. Protections against no-fault evictions already exist for seniors and people with disabilities.
“What it’s going to come down to is whether leadership in the House feels the pressure, feels the desire to put the time aside to make it happen with a short session,” said Luke Melonakos, vice president of the Connecticut Tenants Union. The tenants union will lead the effort to pass the bill, and several housing advocacy groups have said they’ll support it.
Felipe and Housing Committee co-chair Sen. Martha Marx, D-New London, said the bill is one of their priorities this session.
“Just cause eviction will always be high on my priority list. I think it’s super important that we get that passed,” Marx said.
Landlords have vehemently opposed this proposal for years, saying they use no-fault evictions to get out problem tenants and that the law that allows evictions for nuisance tenants or violation of lease is harder to use.
At a press briefing Wednesday, members of the Connecticut Apartment Association said they’ll support legislation to build more housing and to create a statewide landlord registry to ensure accountability. They said the registry would make it easier to contact problem landlords.
“The easiest thing is to say ‘We’re at the end of the lease. We made a commitment to lease to you for a year. That commitment does not have to continue,’” said Greg Konover, president of the Konover Residential Corporation.
Republicans are also strongly opposed to the eviction reform. Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe, called the idea “one of the worst bills I have ever seen.”
“That legislation ultimately denies the right of the property owner to use their property the way they would choose to,” said Housing Committee ranking member Sen. Rob Sampson, R-Wolcott. Sampson is also a landlord and said regulations like this would make it harder for people in his industry.
Rent caps
Republicans have also already said they’ll oppose a measure from Lamont to cap rental increases for out-of-state landlords when they purchase a property. The governor said he wants to ensure people aren’t pushed out of their homes by large, out-of-state buyers.
House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, said he’s focused on implementation of the bill passed during the special session rather than big new housing bills. Part of that implementation will involve setting aside $50 million in state money as an incentive to towns to make zoning changes to allow more housing, as specified in the law.
That money can be used for a variety of needs including infrastructure to support larger town populations.
Accessory dwelling units
Planning and Development Committee co-chair Rep. Eleni Kavros DeGraw, D-Avon, said she’s also interested in looking at ways to make it easier to build and use accessory dwelling units in Connecticut.
Accessory dwelling units are secondary homes built on the property of a single-family home. They can include garage apartments, smaller homes in the yard or apartments built onto an existing home. In 2021, legislators passed a law that sets requirements for towns to allow these dwelling units, unless towns opted out.
Some towns have requirements for the size or type of dwelling unit that makes it hard to build. Others require that the owner live in the main property or that the dwelling units can only be rented to a blood relative of the property owner.
“We want to make them as simple to be built and simple to rent as possible,” said Pete Harrison, Connecticut director of the Regional Plan Association. Pro-Homes CT, which was formerly known as Desegregate CT, is a program of the RPA. The name change is meant to better reflect the breadth of what the organization does, Harrison said.
8-30g
Republicans have also said for years that they want to change the law known as 8-30g, a decades-old statute that offers court remedies to developers whose affordable housing proposals are denied. Towns are exempt from these lawsuits if at least 10% of their housing stock is designated affordable.
Opponents of the law have argued that developers use it as a weapon to push for apartments and that the 10% is hard to meet. Housing advocates say it’s an important tool to get towns that are reluctant to offer more housing to do so, which offers people with low incomes more options of places to live.
Planning and Development Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Gordon, R-Woodstock, said he wants to expand the definition of “affordable housing” under the law to include higher-cost housing. He said now the bill, which includes deed restricted affordable housing, doesn’t do enough for the middle class.
“There’s a lot of people in the middle class who are having housing affordability issues,” Gordon said.
Advocates have said that the bill isn’t meant to represent the full spectrum of affordable housing needed in Connecticut — only deed-restricted housing. Advocates say they’re ready to defend the law against any attempts to weaken it.
Homelessness
Homelessness has also been rising in Connecticut for the past several years. Service providers for the unhoused population are asking for significantly more state money. They want $10 million annually for a housing crisis response fund to keep people from losing their homes and $31.6 million annually to strengthen the state’s homeless response system and bring more people inside during extreme weather.
Lawmakers across the aisle say they want to help the unhoused population. Last year, a bipartisan group formed the Homelessness Caucus to focus on these issues.
“We need to make homelessness more preventable,” Marx said.
Service providers are also part of a larger consortium of housing advocates calling for increased funding to expand the state’s rental assistance program. More than 100,000 Connecticut residents who are eligible for rental aid aren’t getting it because there isn’t enough space in the program.
Chelsea Ross, executive director of the Partnership for Strong Communities, said they want to expand the program by 3,400 vouchers, which would cost $50 million. Compared to the amount of need, Ross said, the ask is modest.
“It’s a pretty nominal expansion, even though $50 million sounds like a big price tag,” Ross said.
Ginny Monk is a reporter for the Connecticut Mirror. Copyright 2026 @ CT Mirror (ctmirrr.org).