Connecticut’s Next Biggest City?

New Haven makes efforts to make housing attractive

The need for housing remains an all too pressing issue for the State of Connecticut. In order to attract people to stay here, there must be places for people to live, better yet if they were affordable. But just as much as building new housing is going to be a key facet of increasing housing, the flipside is maintaining the housing stock we do have. In New Haven, they are looking to “review and strengthen” their ability to do just that.

In early April, Mayor Elicker announced a comprehensive review of the cities Livable City Initiative (LCI), that they hope will help the “department’s housing code-related processes, services, and engagement with tenants and landlords.” According to their press release, approximately 70% of New Haven residents are renters.

Nearly thirty years old, the department began in 1996 “as a response to population loss amid spreading blight,” according to a New Haven Independent interview with former Executive Director Arlevia Samuel, it noted that “the flight of 7,600 residents in just five years brought the population down to 122,000, which the number of vacant buildings soared to 786.”

“Ensuring our residents have affordable, safe, and high-quality housing is a top priority. While LCI has taken significant steps to improve and expand its services in recent years, there is a lot more we can and must do to ensure the department is operating as innovatively, effectively, and efficiently as possible so that we’re meeting the increasing demands of our city’s growing population and expanding housing stock,” said Mayor Elicker.

Housing has been a priority for Mayor Elicker who has said as recently as March of this year that New Haven will be the biggest city by 2034. There have been 1,900 new units in New Haven over the past few years according to Elicker, and another 3,500 planned. The city reached a high of 160,000 residents in the 1950s, but by 2000 it was lower than it had been in 100 years.

Former Mayoral Candidate Liam Brennan is running the review. “With this effort, Mayor Elicker and the City of New Haven are bringing a real sense of urgency and innovation to the critical work of housing code enforcement, anti-blight efforts, and landlord licensing. The significant investments and initiatives made over the last year, as well as those proposed in the new budget, demonstrate a genuine commitment to transforming LCI into a more highly effective agency that ensures all New Haven residents have access to safe, affordable, and high-quality housing,” said Brennan.

The Mayor also proposed creating a new Office of Housing and Community Development within the Economic Development Administration to allow LCI to focus on this work, but the budget will not be adopted until the first Monday in June. Until then, this work will at least help the city preserve the housing they have, and making sure that people know what housing is out there. New Haven might not yet be the biggest city in Connecticut, but if it keeps building, there’s no telling what the future will hold.