A fight over building apartments in mainly white Woodbridge has become a flashpoint in the debate over racial equity in Connecticut Here s why
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The white colonial at 2 Orchard Road is sorely in need of an update. Its orange and yellow floral wallpaper and abundant wooden cabinetry call to mind the year it was built: 1970.
That same year, a study found, the Connecticut town where it sits, Woodbridge, had severely restrictive zoning and, not coincidentally, was among the state’s most homogenous.
More problematic than the Orchard Road home’s dated decor, some say, is that the affordability and diversity of the largely white enclave northwest of New Haven has hardly changed, either.
To spur reform, the nonprofit Open Communities Alliance, which is leasing the single-family home on 1.5 acres and has the option to buy it at a steep discount, is seeking to raze and replace it with a four-unit building including at least two low-income rentals. The civil rights attorneys behind the effort are calling on Woodbridge officials to permit such multifamily construction throughout the town.
Closely followed Woodbridge zoning case enters new phase
After six months of public hearings on a widely followed Woodbridge rezoning proposal, commissioners are to start deliberating.
Is multi-family housing in the suburbs a civil rights issue? Or a matter of water and sewer access?
Or is the idea of an environment-housing “balance” an excuse for avoiding necessary systemic change?
Woodbridge Town Planning & Zoning Commissioners will confront those questions next month as a lengthy dispute over the leafy New Haven suburb’s zoning laws moves into a new phase.
On Monday night, the commissioners held their final public hearing on a two-pronged rezoning proposal submitted by civil-rights attorneys and Yale Law School students looking to make it easier for developers to build multi-family affordable housing in Woodbridge.
Published April 09. 2021 4:19PM By
There may be no state issue more complex, controversial and emotional than how, or even whether, to provide more affordable housing opportunities in Connecticut’s suburbs and encourage racial and economic integration.
It is a discussion that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, touching on racism, classism, restrictive zoning, and the ability of towns to use those zoning rules to protect the character of their communities. Affordable-housing advocates see “character” as a code word for keeping “those people” out.
What is unassailable is that housing options for low-income residents are almost exclusively situated in impoverished and often segregated communities. Even the middle-class is increasingly priced out of housing options. It is a Connecticut embarrassment. A state that likes to see itself as progressive is highly segregated in its makeup and grossly unequal in its educational opportunities, a place of haves and have not
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