Housing advocates have joined the fight to prevent the state of Connecticut from approving a moratorium on affordable housing for the town of New Canaan under the state’s decades-old affordable housing law.

Open Communities Alliance (OCA), a civil-rights organization that advocates for fair housing, filed an intervenor brief late last year in support of a declaratory ruling to revoke a moratorium that the state Department of Housing approved for New Canaan last summer.

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Developer Arnold Karp, who filed a petition last September calling for the revocation of the moratorium, argued that New Canaan had not met the requirements for receiving the moratorium.

“It is simply beyond belief that the Connecticut Department of Housing is willing to approve moratorium points without proof from the applicant town of annual ongoing compliance with respect to affordability requirements,” the petition stated. “Is there any more fundamental requirement for obtaining an exemption from a remedial statute about affordable housing than requiring proof of the statutory obligation – that the units, since approval, have actually been rented in compliance with an affordability plan and finance program rules?”

OCA concurred with Karp’s argument in its briefing.

“New Canaan’s claimed compliance was woefully inadequate and unsupported by evidence,” the briefing states. “Despite the statutory obligation that affordable housing developments must submit annual certifications of compliance, New Canaan Town Planner Sarah Carey stated that the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission ‘has never received annual [8-30h] compliance reports from the Housing Authority relating to Millport or Canaan Parish.’ Although the New Canaan Housing Authority and Westmount Management company asserted via email to the petitioners that both developments are compliant with affordability requirements, they failed to provide any evidence of said compliance.”

Housing Advocates Join Fight To Revoke New Canaan’s Moratorium On Affordable Housing, Jamil Ragland, CT News Junkie, January 7th, 2025, available here