A housing-abundant Fairfield County shall be an engine for the American Dream in Connecticut, and we want state management to assist us get there.
A small variety of anti-homes activists are attempting to keep up an exclusionary establishment — typically wielding local weather and environmental arguments to oppose extra broad-based prosperity — and as Hugh Bailey emphasised in his outstanding August 7 op-ed, we don’t must take heed to them.

Housing shortage shouldn’t be a pure state of affairs, and a pro-homes, pro-opportunity Fairfield County shall be a win-win for its residents and the complete state.
Although the 2022 legislative session led to Might, anti-opportunity activists proceed to flood Connecticut’s opinion sections with screeds towards progress and housing. For instance, a current article within the Connecticut Mirror made the unimaginable declare that native management in Connecticut’s suburbs is definitely a local weather and environmental coverage. The writer — a member of Fairfield’s Plan and Zoning Fee and frequent opponent of Connecticut’s reasonably priced housing legislation 8-30g—wrote:
- This legislation [section 8-30g] has seen little change within the 30-plus years it’s been in impact and local weather change has worsened on this time. Our legislators should critically re-visit and re-evaluate this legislation, which has created little affordability…and adversely impacts our pure surroundings.
Astonishingly, the article states that reasonably priced housing legal guidelines are actively harming the surroundings and implies that 8-30g is someway at fault for not single-handedly stopping local weather change. As Marcus Palumbo pointed out in the Fairfield Patch, the fact is the precise reverse.
Certainly, the reality is that cities like Fairfield have performed nothing for the local weather and surroundings with their native management. A recent University of Connecticut study discovered that leveraging Connecticut’s present Metro-North line will make the state extra local weather resilient, however famous that Fairfield’s stations should not notably walkable and are underutilized. Only 2% of Fairfield’s land permits one thing as small as three properties on a parcel, whereas huge portions of the town mandate two-acre minimal heaps, increasing driving and emissions.
What in regards to the associated declare that solely native planning boards know handle their waterways and susceptible marshlands? Sadly, that additionally doesn’t maintain water.
Whereas Fairfield has each a Conservation Commission and Inland Wetlands Agency, neither group was shaped by way of native management. As an alternative, as Fairfield’s town website writes, “the regulation of inland wetlands and watercourses within the City of Fairfield is a course of initiated in 1974 by the State of Connecticut legislature.” Fairfield County’s suburban zoning boards haven’t wielded their native management within the identify of the surroundings or local weather, however within the identify of shortage and exclusion, leaving us with the lowest vacancy rates in the country and crushing housing and rental costs.
So we all know what native exclusionary zoning hasn’t performed, however I wish to concentrate on what a housing-abundant Fairfield County will do instead. Folks in search of properties right here take housing shortage without any consideration, and I don’t suppose they’ll think about how transformative housing abundance shall be. As an alternative of center class households bidding towards each other for a restricted variety of “member slots” within the county’s suburbs, they might be spending that cash on household holidays, hobbies and the experiences that make life value residing. We don’t want to just accept the exclusionary establishment propped up by a vocal minority. We will select prosperity as an alternative of shortage.
Housing abundance will imply extra probabilities for households in any respect revenue ranges to personal, extra reasonably priced housing for people who want it, extra grandparents that may downsize and age close to family members, extra of the area’s younger adults that may afford to settle close to household, and extra prospects for native companies which are presently nothing however a dream. A housing-abundant Fairfield County shall be a job-generating machine for Connecticut, and a rising, dynamic economic system will raise property values — we don’t must artificially scale back the variety of properties to realize that. And, importantly, a housing-abundant Fairfield County will make the most of its present downtowns and transit stops to generate much less CO2 emissions and cleaner air.
With its entry to New York Metropolis, lovely shoreline, and nice colleges, Fairfield County is a beautiful place to reside, and I believe extra folks ought to have the prospect to make a life right here in the event that they wish to. They need to have the prospect to personal a single-family residence with a yard, and they need to have the prospect to lease in a walkable downtown or reside in an adjunct dwelling unit close to their household if that’s what they’d desire.
The cornerstone of the American Dream is the flexibility to hunt alternative, however that may solely occur in case you have a spot to name residence. Native management is proscribing our selections and desires, and we should always ignore the voices pretending that it’s good for the surroundings or that exclusion is a sound coverage.
In 2007 then-Sen. Barack Obama stated “when our fellow Individuals are denied the American dream, our personal desires are diminished,” and I couldn’t agree extra. The Fairfield County of the primary half of the twentieth century was a spot the place folks might obtain these desires, but it surely wasn’t all the time equally obtainable. As we speak, we want state management to usher in a simply, housing-abundant Fairfield County and assist hundreds obtain their American Dream. Finally, we’ll all be higher off for it.
Thomas Broderick lives in Trumbull.