Civil rights groups on Thursday filed a pair of lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and HUD Secretary Ben Carson for weakening an Obama-era rule meant to keep lenders, landlords and insurers from discriminating.

Attorneys from the Open Communities Alliance, joined by law students and professors at a fair housing development clinic at Yale Law School, are asking Woodbridge’s Planning and Zoning Commission to approve their application to build a four-unit house on a 1.5 acre lot that is zoned for a single-family home – and, more importantly, to completely overhaul local zoning regulations to allow the town’s “fair share” of affordable housing to be built. The application is different from a typical zoning application in that it focuses almost entirely on the need for a systemic overhaul of the town’s “exclusionary” zoning regulations, as opposed to seeking approval to break ground on a single project.

There are tools to address the racial/ethnic health disparities exposed by the coronavirus

Now that we can quantify it, leaders have a moral obligation to address the problem

In Hartford, federal lawmakers pledge to hold HUD accountable for concentrating poverty in city neighborhoods, slum housing projects

By Rebecca Lurye, CT Mirror, January 17, 2020. 

Available here. 

How Wealthy Towns Keep People With Housing Vouchers Out

By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, ProPublica, January 9, 2020. 

Section 8 vouchers should give low-income people the opportunity to live outside poor communities. But discriminatory landlords, exclusionary zoning and the federal government’s hands-off approach leave recipients with few places to call home.

Available Here. 

Nonprofit wins grant to support Hartford residents leaving failed subsidized housing projects 

Rebecca Lurye, Hartford Courant, July 9, 2019. Available here.

Make CT more accommodating to housing and businesses

It's time to rewrite the confusing law that governs local zoning decisions

Jim Perras, CT Mirror, June 26, 2019. Available here. 

Connecticut Looks At Tackling Housing Issues To Treat Asthma

Nicole Leonard, WNPR, May 29, 2019. Article and Audio Interview Available Here.

Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing

In southwest Connecticut, the gap between rich and poor is wider than anywhere else in the country. Invisible walls created by local zoning boards and the state government block affordable housing and, by extension, the people who need it.

Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, Connecticut Mirror, Pro Bublica, May 22, 2109.