There’s a lot to parse in a recent screed from CT169Strong, the group that stands against any meaningful effort to build more affordable housing in Connecticut. In a Hearst Connecticut op-ed, the group’s leaders talk a lot about energy prices and other topics, most of which they’re off-base about. 

But let’s focus on a common theme in their writing. They continually put the words “housing crisis” in scare quotes, because they don’t think it’s a real thing.

You see this kind of technique all the time. In this latest piece, the writers use terms like “gaslighting” to describe “the so-called ‘housing crisis’ in Connecticut.” If there’s no crisis, by this line of thinking, any solution is by definition illegitimate.

They are, in every particular, wrong.

Connecticut’s housing vacancy rate is 3.5 percent, far below the national average of 6.6 percent. That means there aren’t a lot of homes available, and that means higher prices and rents. In June, a real estate brokerage found the median price of a home in Connecticut was $477,600, up 11.2 percent compared to a year earlier. We’re also not building enough new homes. The rate of new home construction permits is about one-third the rate of a generation ago, and among the lowest nationally. 

But isn’t that because we have no population growth? Surely, skeptics say, we don’t need more housing because our population isn’t getting any bigger. 

They have it backwards. Demand to live in the state is high, which is why home prices keep pushing upwards. If there were no demand, prices would fall. And employers are feeling the pressure: As of October, business leaders say the state had about 90,000 job openings. Population is flat because there is no place for it to grow.

All that adds up to one reality: Connecticut is in the middle of a housing crisis. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.