Erin Boggs, executive director of Open Communities Alliance, began researching for the group's signature "Fair Share" housing proposal in 2014.

Peter Harrison, Connecticut director of the Regional Plan Association, has been advocating for transit-oriented development in the state for about five years and has pushed a specific "Work, Live, Ride" concept for the past three.

House Majority Leader Jason Rojas, D-East Hartford, has made housing his signature issue in one legislative session after another, negotiating with colleagues who often required significant convincing.

There is nothing simple about the recently signed HB 8002, which takes a more ambitious approach to housing policy than Connecticut has seen in years, or maybe ever. It has an expansive time horizon, many moving parts, and all kinds of different options. It will be a long time before we understand its full implications.

Connecticut’s state legislature last Wednesday passed a sweeping housing bill, HB 8002, in special session.

The bill aims to incentivize and accelerate housing development in cities and towns across Connecticut — including New Haven. Gov. Ned Lamont SOM ’80, who vetoed an earlier version of the bill in June, plans to sign the bill soon, he said in a press release.

A more than 100-page housing bill awaits Governor Lamont’s signature after passing during a special session last week.

Some opponents of the major bill are taking action and are pushing for the governor to veto the legislation.

You might remember Governor Lamont denied a previous housing bill. But in a statement, he promised to sign this revised one.

Dear Gov. Ned Lamont:

We listened closely when you announced a veto of HB 5002, the omnibus housing bill, in June. We heard you say that you’d like a revised version of the bill on your desk following a special session this year. We understand there was some loud opposition to HB 5002, which may have played a part in your decision. But the calls from supporters urging that the bill be signed were just as loud.

Gov. Ned Lamont, state and federal lawmakers and housing advocates stand together to denounce President Donald Trump’s executive order directing states to remove people from the streets, possibly by committing them for mental health or drug treatment without their consent.

But unity is absent due to continued friction after the governor vetoed Democrats’ bill intended to create more housing and ease the affordability crisis and shortage facing the state.

In the suburbs of Hartford, far from the streets and pulpits where he would gain fame later in life, a young Martin Luther King Jr. experienced life outside the segregated South for the first time. King worked in the tobacco fields of Simsbury as a teenager in the 1940s, and it was here, he later said, that the call to the ministry first came to him.

The greatest Civil Rights leader of the 20th century considered his time in Connecticut to be formative to the growth of his worldview, and this deserves to be commemorated. But there is more to history than putting up a monument, and honoring the past should be about action instead of gestures.

Housing segregation, both racial and economic, was hotly debated in our legislature in this and recent sessions. No one doubts that it exists, though we debate its causes and remedies. What we don’t talk about enough, however, is its cost.

Its cost, first, and foremost, is moral. Housing segregation shrinks social trust. Our country is beset by polarization and mistrust of people who we are told are different. This is made worse by housing segregation. When we are each other’s neighbors we learn that we share much more, in our values and our hopes for our families, than politicians and media would suggest.

Gov. Ned Lamont this week vetoed what would have been the most significant housing legislation Connecticut has seen in years, over concerns that the bill undermined towns' rights to set housing policy for themselves.

Now the question is: What comes next?

Advocates are expressing disappointment in Gov. Ned Lamont for his Monday veto of a broad bill they say would have helped alleviate the state’s housing crisis.

“There’s a lot of disappointment and, frankly, anger,” said Pete Harrison, Connecticut director of the Regional Plan Association, a think tank that advocated for the bill. “It’s just a real poor leadership decision.”

The bill would have, among many other provisions, required cities and towns to set goals for the creation of affordable housing units, but did not mandate their construction.