November 1999

By James Lawlor

Connecticut: Time to study housing. In June, the legislature passed a bill establishing a commission to study affordable housing issues. The commission is to report to the legislature by March, says chapter legislative chair Jose Giner.

The commission is charged with reviewing the state's statutes affecting affordable housing, particularly the land-use appeals procedure and the extent to which local zoning complies with state law encouraging development of low- and moderate-income housing.

Connecticut first passed an affordable housing law in 1987, notes chapter director and affordable housing expert Brian Miller, AICP. Miller will represent the chapter on the 39-member commission. That law, passed during a housing boom, required municipalities with little affordable housing to require new developments to include low- and moderate-income units.

In practice, Miller observes, the law created more litigation than housing. Municipalities had no positive incentive to cooperate, and many of the projects incorporating low- and moderate-income units were bigger than local planners envisioned. To reach the law's goal of at least 10 percent affordable housing, he notes, some towns would have to provide for 25 percent to 50 percent more new housing, not a likely prospect.

According to Miller, there is wide recognition in the state that the law is not working as intended. That has led to almost annual attempts in the legislature to gut the program or abolish it entirely. In addition, court cases over the past several years have pointed up the conflict between requirements for provision of low- and moderate-income housing and local governments' planning. For several years, the chapter has been advocating that a blue ribbon commission be established to the study the law and, it is hoped, improve it.

In other action, the legislature included a tax credit for rehabilitation of historic homes in its omnibus tax-reform law. S.B. 1 grants a credit amounting to 30 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenses; it may be spread over five years. The credit is targeted to properties located in low-income or economically distressed areas.

Illinois: Land acquisition program. On July 21, Gov. George Ryan signed S.B. 1087, authorizing the Illinois Department of Natural Resources to acquire open space for preservation and recreational purposes, legislative committee chair Sharon Caddigan, AICP, reports. The law also permits the department to buy preservation easements from landowners and establishes an Open Lands Loan Fund in the state treasury to supply funds for local land acquisition programs.

Florida: Pre-session warmup. Preparations for next year's legislative session are already under way, chapter executive director Marcia Elder notes. The legislative committee has begun the annual process of drafting a legislative platform, based on issues it thinks will be before the legislature in 2000. Some of the matters likely to come up include a review of the local planning process, with emphasis on the plan amendment approval process; interaction of transportation and land-use planning; regulation of septic tanks; and school impact fees.

New York: Change that formula. Upstate chapter legislative chair Steven Finn reports that the distribution formula for the smart growth demonstration projects mentioned in last month's column will not be on a strictly geographic basis after all. At a meeting with representatives of the secretary of state in mid-September, Finn learned that parceling out of funds would be controlled by the legislators who originally pushed for smart growth legislation.

Finn says the change may not make much of a difference in practice because sponsors of the legislation were fairly evenly distributed between upstate and downstate communities.

California: Big box bill vetoed. As noted in last month's Planning News, California Gov. Gray Davis vetoed a "big box" bill that passed the legislature on the final day of its session.

The bill, A.B. 84, would have barred local governments from approving retail developments of over 100,000 square feet that devote more than 15 percent of their floor area to food and drug sales. According to chapter legislative representative Sande George, it was strongly opposed by both the chapter and the California League of Cities on the ground that it undermined local land-use control.