WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — The largest factor tied to inflation is housing cost. So with sky-high inflation and rent going up, one community is saying, enough. West Hartford is launching a new grant and loan program to make housing more affordable.
West Hartford is using $ 6 million of federal COVID relief money to invest in affordable housing. An old hotel property at 900 Farmington Ave is an example of a project that could potentially be eligible to benefit from the funding. It’s a designated ‘brownfield’ which means the soil is contaminated. West Hartford just found out last week their application for state grant money to aid in the cleanup was accepted. An important first step.
“Today we have about 2,000 affordable units out of our 26,000. That’s not enough. We need to provide residents with more opportunities to afford to live in this great town," said West Hartford Town Manager Rick Ledwith.
Some projects are already underway. A nun convent on Park Road will have about 30 affordable rental units. Nine more are slated for the old Children’s Museum and two more are going into development at 920 Farmington Ave which just broke ground. All of them have a rate of 80% of the area’s median income.
“What we want to incentivize is going deeper. Doing 65% or median income or 50%, 40%, 30% and that truly provides options for people who might not be able to live in West Hartford,” explained West Hartford Mayor Sherri Cantor.
So what is affordable housing? There’s actually not an exact definition in state law. But federally it’s defined as a resident spending no more than 30% of their income on rent or mortgage.
“There’s research that shows lower income families put that money right back into the local economy,” said Sean Ghio of Connecticut’s Partnership for Strong Communities organization. “ If you just look at renters, there are over 100,000 renter households who spend more than half their income on housing right now.”
The Partnership for Strong Communities has long been advocating to break the stigma of affordable housing. It won’t lower your property value and long gone are the days of ‘the projects’ where poverty was concentrated in run-down urban developments.
“That memory holds for a lot of people but affordable and subsidized housing hasn’t looked that way for a generation,” said Ghio.
The new affordable housing model is called ‘mixed income.’ Designated low-income renters living side by side with market-rate renters in apartments built to the same specs and standards. They are, “Safer, cleaner, and more energy efficient,” said Ghio.
West Hartford said they hope to start soliciting proposals from developers soon and within two years have more units move-in ready.
Matt Caron is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at mcaron@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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