The Affordable Housing Appeals Act, known colloquially as 8-30g, has long been a widely misunderstood law. It’s one of the few ways that affordable housing gets built in many of our most exclusionary Connecticut communities, but its effect is purely reactionary – it only comes into play when someone proposes a development in certain communities.

It doesn’t require any town to reach 10 percent affordable housing. That is simply the threshold required to be exempted from the law. It does, however, work well with the recently passed affordable housing law in Connecticut known as PA 25-1. 

Despite all that, 8-30g continues to be the source of confusion and misinformation. That’s a bit understandable because it’s a complicated law, especially for those not directly involved in policy.

But with the legislative session underway, there’s renewed momentum behind potential changes in the law, even with Democrats firmly in control of both houses of the General Assembly. There is a slate of bills arising from the Majority Leader’s Roundtable on Affordable Housing that chip away at its workings, and so there are several chances that it could be amended. That would be a mistake.

First, the misguided notions. A recent CT Mirror opinion piece said small towns need a “different standard” under 8-30g. “A town of fewer than 10,000 residents is not the same as a town of 25,000 or 50,000. Yet under 8-30g, they are largely treated the same,” the author states.

That’s true only insofar as each town is judged on percentages. If 10 percent of a municipality’s housing units are deed-restricted as affordable or receive some kind of government subsidy, that town is exempt from 8-30g – whether small town or big city. Similarly, a moratorium on 8-30g developments can be obtained by 2 percent growth in affordable housing units since the last census. That’s a small number for rural communities, larger in bigger towns.

So there’s already a tiered approach to meeting the law’s standards. Further modifications would only make the law less effective.

Another common complaint has to do with what critics call a changing denominator. The idea is this: Since affordable housing units are often built in the context of a larger development that includes market rate units, a town that builds a mixed-income development can’t really get ahead. Every time it adds new affordable units, it also adds more units total, which changes the number it is striving to achieve. Hence, a changing denominator.

This is true to an extent, but not all that meaningful. For one thing, the state lacks tens of thousands of homes, both affordable and otherwise, so anything that comes on the market is a gain for the state.

But beyond that, there’s no truth to the idea that the only way to add affordable units is in the context of a larger development with market-rate units mixed in. There are all kinds of other ways to build affordably. And because of the complicated means by which a moratorium is calculated (using what are called Housing Unit Equivalency points, which are a fixed total, as a possible alternative to the 2 percent goal), the changing denominator doesn’t even come into play in many cases.

OCA estimates that if meaningful housing need goals are used, most towns will attain moratorium relief from 8-30g within two years. In the meantime, Connecticut is in a housing crisis, so no steps should be taken to undermine the Affordable Housing Appeals Act during the multi-year implementation process proscribed in the new zoning reform law. 

If anything, 8-30g should be strengthened. Legislators should be careful not to let anyone use last year’s new housing law as a reason why the Affordable Housing Appeals Act is not as necessary as it used to be. It remains a key to getting built the housing our state needs.

Hugh Bailey, Policy Director
Open Communities Alliance (OCA)