Beware Housing Bills With Socialist Goals
The Democrats' lurch to the extreme left is accelerating at warp speed -- and Connecticut is the latest victim.
The state legislature's Democratic supermajority last week rammed through a bill, HB 8002, that's a thinly disguised socialist wishlist.
Cynically couched as a remedy for the affordable housing crisis, its real purpose is ideological: forcing Connecticut's 169 towns to achieve what the bill calls "economic diversity."
Translation: If you've worked hard to own a home in a leafy suburb with quiet streets, you can't live there unless everybody can -- including the homeless and those with low incomes.
The state, through regional councils, will dictate how many people at each income level a town must house.
The councils are mere middlemen, a cosmetic addition to paper over a fundamental loss of local control.
This isn't about allowing one apartment building in a town of single-family homes; up to 20% of a town's housing will have to be "affordable" rentals.
The bill even forces towns to let the homeless sleep in local parks or camp on sidewalks, despite the risk of crime and disorder. Public safety be damned.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, seeking a third term in 2026 and fearing a challenge on his left flank, called the legislature into special session to pass this bill -- and it did on 1 a.m. Friday, with zero Republican votes.
GOP state Sen. Rob Sampson, who called the measure "very coercive," warned that towns will soon "look like what the state of Connecticut decides," losing their local character.
Republicans predicted it will push up the state's property taxes, already among the nation's highest.
To accommodate new apartment buildings, towns with mostly single-family housing will get clobbered with huge costs to install sewers and water lines, and to add transportation and school capacity.
Homeownership will actually get more out of reach.
If Democrats were honestly concerned with improving affordability, they'd seek to add rentals where they're most needed -- in cities like Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, where the infrastructure for housing density already exists.
Connecticut's extreme bill is strikingly different from the housing efforts other states and cities have launched.
Eighteen states and New York City's own "City of Yes" program are permitting basement apartments and backyard cottages.
Montana is allowing conversions of commercial space like vacant malls into apartment complexes, and easing parking requirements to one space per rental unit.
Texas reduced lot-size requirements but only for new residential tracts, not existing neighborhoods.
In contrast, Connecticut's bill affects every town and eliminates parking requirements entirely for many buildings -- a looming nightmare for small towns with narrow residential streets.
Democrats are giving a middle finger to locals who value their villages' traditional New England charm.
Towns that don't comply face draconian penalties -- losing any right to appeal when developers arrive with affordable housing plans of their own.
During the Senate proceedings, Democratic Majority Leader Bob Duff sneered at Republicans' objections, instructing his members to vote against every GOP amendment without debate.
But Duff and the Democrats don't seem to understand the issues at hand.
When Sampson challenged a provision outlawing "hostile architecture" -- public seating with dividers and armrests, meant to keep homeless people from sleeping on them -- Duff answered that it is intended to facilitate sleeping in the rough. That's the result of a housing shortage.
No, Sampson replied, "People are not homeless because there are no rents available"; mental illness and drug addiction are the major causes.
Sampson nailed it. The new law will bring chaos to peaceful streets.
Forget allowing your teens to walk around town alone.
Yet the Democrats' housing bill imagines these people will peacefully settle into newly constructed apartment units throughout the state.
It's la-la land thinking. And dangerous.
A formerly homeless tenant mainstreamed into an apartment is likely to harass and assault other tenants, set fires or even cede the space to drug dealers or other criminals, according to homeless expert Stephen Eide of the Manhattan Institute.
Last week, President Donald Trump informed the homeless advocacy industrial complex that to get federal money, they must abandon the "Housing First" approach that fails to treat the addictions and illnesses that drive homelessness in the first place.
Whether you like Trump or not, he's right on this one.
Yet Lamont and his lefty allies, just like New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, vow not to remove the homeless from the streets or commit them to mental health or drug treatment against their will.
It's sheer lunacy -- and so is Connecticut's top-down housing bill.
When Lamont signs it into law, as he has vowed to do, he will sabotage his state, damaging its towns irreversibly.
The need for affordable housing is urgent, but this is no way to meet it.
Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Governor of New York State and Chairman & Founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths at www.hospitalinfection.org. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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