Infrastructure

Blotting Out Blight

Hartford makes “significant escalation” in housing violation fight

If you travel to a state outside of New England, in the Midwest or down South in Texas, you’ll see something that you don’t normally see in Connecticut — open space. And it is on this empty space that they are capitalizing upon with new housing developments to keep up with demand. Connecticut — small, old, and developed — does not have this luxury. So what developments do happen are important, but towns and cities cannot forget about houses and buildings that have gone out of use, that is to say become blighted. Hartford has been taking aim at these properties in the hopes of putting them back to use.

According to the Center for Community Progress, “blight” has become a shorthand for people to describe houses or areas that they dislike for being “eyesores.” Unfortunately, when this problem becomes widespread, it changes the character of the neighborhood and perpetuates a negative cycle: “This intensifies poor living conditions, impacting the economy, community, housing stock, and residents, which in turn fuels more vacancy and abandonment.” So there are two sides to this coin — making sure that a neighborhood doesn’t become blighted on reputation alone and fixing it if it does start.

Hartford has done both of these things. Like so many other towns and cities, our state capital had begun revising blight ordinances and imposing fines in the past decade, but current Mayor, Arunan Arulampalam, has been tackling the problem. First with a survey that mapped out areas at-risk or already suffering from blight, being proactive about landlords who don’t respond to fine structures, and investing the remediation and redevelopment of blighted properties.

Each of these pillars is crucial in supporting the fight against blight. Over the past year, Hartford identified 250 structures that are blighted, and this information fed into a recent push to make landlords responsible for their homes. From a write-up in the CT News Junkie, Mayor Arulampalam made it clear that “landlords’ failure to meet their responsibilities creates unsafe environments for residents and contributes to neighborhood decline.” The city has gone so far as recommending charges against one landlord for housing violations, which the paper called a “significant escalation” in the fight against blight. The final pillar is bringing the city back to a virtuous cycle. This is the toughest part of the job as anyone who has seen the multi-decade efforts in Detroit. While Hartford doesn’t have nearly the extent of blight that the Motor City has, rejuvenating neighborhoods can be a lot like trying to put a car going 65 mph into reverse. It’s not going to happen right away — you have to brake first. But the city has been dutifully applying for grants and has received funds to assess and remediate properties in town. Likely uses for those lots and buildings — residential development, a public library branch, social service operations, and a digital inclusion center.

As noted, Connecticut does not have the luxury of wide-open spaces that are just waiting for developments to happen. Many times, in order for something to be built, something else would have to be torn down. Towns and cities must do what is necessary to make sure that all of their housing stock is thriving, following Hartford’s example shows that while it might not be easy, it is something that can be done.