The ongoing drive to reform land use in Connecticut may not succeed. Bringing the issue to the forefront has energized opponents as well as supporters, and since the Connecticut suburbs typically get what they want, the chances of nothing happening are significant.

But it’s been useful nonetheless in illuminating one of the state’s most deeply rooted problems and exposing attitudes that seem stuck in amber from an earlier age.

Regardless of what happens with specific bills, the state has a long way to go to achieve equity. But at least we can more clearly see where the stumbling blocks lie. And we can maybe talk more honestly about the disparities between communities that are clear to anyone who looks, even as we seem unable to solve them, or unwilling.

Neighborhoods matter. As Vox’s Dylan Matthews reported, researchers Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence Katz found in 2016 that moving to a wealthier neighborhood not only increased the likelihood that kids would go to college, but also increased earnings by roughly 31 percent by the time they’d reached their mid-20s.

Part of what has kept Kennetha out of living in Franklin is exclusionary zoning. Single-family zoning, which means it’s illegal to build anything other than single-family homes, is prevalent in the suburb. Single-family homes are more expensive than apartments, townhomes, or duplexes, and that makes rent costly, too. Houses in Franklin go for an average price of $550,000, far above the average in Nashville of $335,000.

Systemic Inequality: Displacement, Exclusion, and Segregation

How America's Housing System Undermines Wealth Building in Communities of Color

Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell, and Abril Castro, Center for American Progress, August 7, 2019. Available Here. 

A crisis of low incomes and a parallel crisis of tight supply.

Matthew Yglesias, Vox, July 30, 2019. Available Here. 

Attacking the Black–White Opportunity Gap That Comes from Residential Segregation

Kimberly Quick and Richard D. Kahlenberg, The Century Foundation, June 25, 2019. Available here. 

2018 Was the Year of the YIMBY, Kriston Capps, CityLab, December 28, 2018, available here

Minneapolis Confronts Its History of Housing Segregation, Henry Grabar, Slate, December 7, 2018, available here

Housing Inequality Can Be Both Cause And Effect Of Poverty In Wealthy CT, Clarice Silber, CT Mirror, Oct. 16, 2018, available here

Elizabeth Warren’s Ambitious Fix for America’s Housing Crisis, Madeleine Carlisle, The Atlantic, Sept. 25, 2018, available here

Taking on Class and Racial Discrimination in Housing, Richard Kahlenberg, The American Prospect, August 2, 2018, available here