A new report suggests that Connecticut’s laws make the state well-suited to improve its housing affordability through a little-known but growing model: community land trusts.

A community land trust is a way to create and preserve affordable housing in which a nonprofit owns the land and develops housing. Sometimes, additional community gathering spaces such as gardens or shops can go on the land as well.

The housing has regulations regarding ownership and transfer of the property to new residents that keeps it affordable. Connecticut’s laws regarding land trusts include one that reduces property tax burdens on the land. The law helps make the state amenable to land trusts, according to the report released last month from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Still, advocates say Connecticut can do more. They want to see more funding put toward the model as well as further tax reforms.

Kristin King-Ries, one of the report’s authors, said there has been a growing interest in community land trusts nationwide.

“There’s been a return to the idea of a full potential of community land trusts as a way to build the whole community up,” King-Ries said in an interview.

Connecticut is one of just six states that reduces property tax burdens only on community land trust-owned land. Land trusts can get property tax easements in the state. Eight others require local assessors to reduce the tax burden on land owned by a CLT and to take affordability restrictions on the homes themselves into account when calculating taxes on the homes, according to the report.

Taxes on the homes built on community land trust property have been an issue for homeowners on Southeastern Connecticut Community Land Trust property, executive director Mirna Martinez said.

Homes on community land trusts typically have certain restrictions around the sale that keep the homeowner from earning as much money as they might in a traditional private residence sale. The restrictions are meant to ensure the homes stay affordable in the long-term.

Martinez said Connecticut tax law doesn’t take this into account when assessors are evaluating the homes.

Connecticut was also one of the early adopters of a state law that had statutes that enabled community land trust development. In 2018, five had what the report defines as comprehensive community land trust legislation. These laws usually include measures that define a community land trust, have a state housing trust fund or other funding for land trusts, or taxation standards specialized to community land trusts, among other aspects, according to the report.

Earlier this year, that number was up to 20, according to the report.

“I see this as sort of brought up as an important tool for affordable housing,” said Alexander Kolokotronis, director of the Naugatuck Valley Project, which owns a land trust property in Waterbury. “It falls in this broader ecosystem of affordable housing. And so there is definitely more interest. I hear and see more talk of it in Connecticut.”

The Waterbury property operates as a co-op, a corporation that allows residents to buy shares in the housing development so they can take votes on how the property should be managed. The units were built on property owned by the land trust, in a unique partnership that means land costs can stay low.

Kolokotronis said in his experience, community land trusts work to preserve affordability. He compared it to methods such as the federal low-income housing tax credit program, which offers tax incentives to developers if they keep a set percentage of units in a development affordable for at least 30 years.

The program is one of the federal government’s primary ways of encouraging construction of affordable housing. But critics have pointed out that the affordability requirements don’t last forever.

Connecticut runs the risk of having about 5,000 units of affordable housing expiring in the next five years, according to a report from the National Housing Preservation Database.

Martinez said while she thinks momentum is growing for community land trusts there is still work to do.

Often, when she’s talking about her work, she said people don’t know what a community land trust is.

“I think we still have a long way to go in telling the story,” Martinez said.

Her organization, which operates primarily in New London, encourages homeownership and community gardens on their land. She said she’d like to see the state target down payment assistance to programs like community land trusts that guarantee affordability in perpetuity.

Kolokotronis agreed that more funding would help the model grow, particularly to help with staffing and technical assistance for the nonprofits. 

King-Ries said in addition to gains in popularity, her review found that more community land trusts are working to encourage density.

“It was a single-family model … but in the last five to 10 years, the shift to multi-family, that’s really been where the focus has been,” King-Ries said.

It reflects a larger land use conversation that’s happening around the country, including in Connecticut. Affordable housing advocates have been pushing for more density because it allows more units to be built on existing land and makes it easier for more residents to use public transit.

As community land trusts grow denser and have more units, King-Ries said there’s a push-and-pull between a desire to build more and the community feel that’s traditionally part of community land trusts.

But, she said, it’s helped by a growing number of land trusts that are using the land for community spaces such as gardens and churches.

“There’s been a return to the idea of a full potential of community land trusts as a way to build the whole community up,” she said.

A lone bagpiper played an ancient Irish tune, The Minstrel Boy, as a hearse bearing the body of Connecticut’s 87th governor, M. Jodi Rell, glided to a stop by the broad brick walk leading to the north portico of the state Capitol.

On a summer’s day 20 years ago, Rell marched to the same spot to take the oath of office, succeeding a governor who had resigned in the face of an impeachment inquiry. She then welcomed the public in a receiving line.

There was one last receiving line Tuesday in the east atrium of the Capitol, hard by the statue of Nathan Hale. Rell would lie in state for four hours before her funeral, her coffin draped by the blue flag of the state she served as a state representative, lieutenant governor and governor from 1985 to 2011.

As Lawrence F. Cafero, a former House Republican leader and one of the mourners in line Tuesday, recalled of her inaugural: It was cloudy at the start, but the sun eventually shone on the new governor.

Rell, who finished the last six months of her predecessor’s third term and was elected in 2006 to a four-year term of her own, died in Florida on Nov. 20 after a brief illness.

She had a plane ticket and plans to come back for Thanksgiving to Connecticut, where her daughter and son, Meredith and Michael, and their spouses and Rell’s grandchildren live. Her usual routine was to stay through Christmas, then head south before the new year.

Lying in state denotes a certain formality, and there was that on Tuesday. 

A police and military honor guard awaited the hearse, which arrived as scheduled — a half hour before the 10 a.m. start, when her family would receive mourners. Six military men bore the coffin, climbing the steps to a called cadence.

“Ready! Step.”

They carried the coffin to a bier of cherry wood, on loan from a local funeral director, John C. Carmon. A legislative facilities manager said it was the same model the Reagan and Bush families chose when the former presidents lied in state at the U.S. Capitol.

A rotating honor guard, one Capitol police officer and one member of the military, stood at attention on either side. Her official portrait, borrowed from the Museum of Connecticut History on the other side of Capitol Avenue, faced the casket.

The family retired to a borrowed caucus room, where M. Lisa Moody, who served Rell as chief of staff for nearly all her 16 years as lieutenant and governor, waited to greet them. Moody was hobbled by recent foot surgery.

Paddi LeShane and Jackie Bernstein were there. Like Moody and Rell, they all were active in the Connecticut Women’s Council, a professional and social networking group.

The family held a private wake the previous day in Brookfield, the community Rell represented in the House. The home where Rell and her husband, Lou, raised their children is now owned by her daughter. 

The former governor had kept a condo in town, though she was a snow bird, a retiree with a legal residence in Florida. Lou Rell died a decade ago at 73. Their daughter looks and sounds like the mother. The son favors the father.

The formality of a governor lying in state didn’t last long, as a line formed, nearly all of the early arrivals with some connection to Connecticut politics and its 87th governor.

“I had to sneak over and see my friend,” Paul Doyle said.

Doyle is a Superior Court judge who sits in criminal court, two blocks south of the Capitol. He was a House member during Rell’s 10 years in the House and later was elected to the Senate.

Peter Nystrom, the mayor of Norwich and a former House member, was already there. Soon, others followed: James A. Amann, who became House speaker in 2005, sometimes clashing with Rell over issues — once drawing the ire of his wife, who admonished him to be nicer.

Thomas D. Ritter, one of Amann’s predecessors as speaker, chatted with Jack Betkoski and Michael Caron, two former lawmakers now serving on the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. Herb Shepardson, the Republican chair when Rell was governor, was behind them.

At 10 a.m., the family emerged to greet Gov. Ned Lamont and Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, the latter of whom had served in the House with Rell. Lamont and Bysiewicz were the first to pause by the casket, then chat with the family. Lying in state had become a wake.

House Speaker Matt Ritter, a Democrat, and House Minority Leader Vincent J. Candelora, a Republican, arrived together. Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, R-Brookfield, left the line to join them. Then he returned to his place in line, explaining that Rell, who held the House seat that Harding would occupy before going to the Senate, had a thing about not jumping lines.

Cafero, a Republican, stood in line in front of Tom Swan, the director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, a liberal activist in Democratic causes.

Swan was one of organizers behind an effort to pass campaign finance reform the year after Rell took office. Rell wanted bans on contributions from contractors and lobbyists, but not the public financing of campaigns sought by Swan and others.

Ultimately, Rell accepted a version with public financing. On Tuesday, Swan said her initial reluctance was immaterial.

“She signed it,” Swan said.

There were other things about Rell that Swan admired, including signing a law that gave early marriage rights to same-sex couples under a civil unions law. She later signed a gay marriage bill enacting a court order. Medicaid expanded under Rell, and the tax code got more progressive, even if it was through a budget Rell allowed to take effect without her signature.

“She was a good governor,” Swan said, his voice low as he approached the casket and Rell’s family. 

An initial rush subsided after 45 minutes, but a stream of others continued into the afternoon. Liz Kurantowicz, a former Rell aide, wore a scarf, a tribute to her former boss’s fashion signature.

“This is a Rell scarf,” Kurantowicz, pointing to a state seal.

Donald E. Williams Jr., the former Senate president pro tem, is a Democrat who led the opposition to the Republican governor but noted it was an opposition without rancor. 

Williams moved up the pecking order at the Capitol the same time as Rell. When Gov. John G. Rowland resigned and Rell became governor, William’s predecessor as Senate leader, Kevin B. Sullivan, automatically succeeded Rell as lieutenant governor. Williams was then chosen as the new Senate leader. 

After greeting the family, the mourners paused to sign a guest book that sat on a lectern by three easels hold photos.

The National Guard had brought pictures of Rell at events for Operation ELF, the guard’s annual toy drive. It was a pet cause of Rell’s. The photos were displayed on easels off to the side, near an illuminated Christmas tree.

Funeral services for former Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who died on Nov. 20 at the age of 78, are being held Tuesday in Hartford. Rell, a Republican, led the state from July 2004 to 2011.

The public may pay respects to the late governor from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Connecticut state Capitol in Hartford. A mass for Rell will follow at 2:30 p.m. in the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, located at 140 Farmington Ave.

Traffic is expected to be impacted in Hartford by the large attendance. Farmington Avenue will be closed between Broad Street and Sigourney Street from about 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., police said.

A leader of ‘honesty and openness’

Rell was Connecticut’s second female governor and took the role at a difficult time. She was lieutenant governor when former Gov. John Rowland abruptly resigned in 2004 during a corruption investigation.

“I worked hard every day, and I sought to do things because I wanted to do them right and for the right reasons,” Rell said when her official governor’s portrait was unveiled in 2013.

“She governed with honesty and openness,” former Republican State Sen. John McKinney said at the 2013 unveiling event. “She governed with class and character, and that, to me, is the great legacy of Jodi Rell.”

Several current and former lawmakers shared a similar sentiment following her death. Gov. Ned Lamont credited Rell with bringing stability to the state’s government – and rebuilding trust with residents.

“The Jodi Rell that the people of Connecticut saw in public was the Jodi Rell that she was in real life — calm, rational, caring, approachable, and devoted to her family and to her state,” Lamont said in a statement after her death.

Rell was a longtime Brookfield, Connecticut, resident. Prior to becoming lieutenant governor, she represented Brookfield in the state House of Representatives. She was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and attended Old Dominion University and Western Connecticut State University.

Private burial planned

Lamont’s office said Rell will be laid to rest at another date in a private ceremony at the Connecticut State Veterans Cemetery in Middletown, alongside her husband, Lou Rell, who was a veteran of the U.S. Navy.

Flags, which had been flying at half-staff since Rell’s death was announced, will return to full-staff at sunset Tuesday evening.

This story will be updated. Connecticut Public Radio’s Patrick Skahill contributed to this report.