Last week’s special session was supposed to be simple, a short return to Hartford to make sure families relying on SNAP and essential programs could continue putting food on their tables. Our food banks are now reporting levels of demand higher than at any time in recent memory, which should have been the primary focus of the session. But as often happens, something else was slipped into the spotlight. Gov. Ned Lamont reintroduced a housing bill he had already vetoed once, and in the span of three rushed days, from Wednesday to Friday, HB 8002 was pushed through with almost no time for the public or legislators to meaningfully digest what was inside.

The bill is being presented as a solution to Connecticut’s housing crisis, homelessness, and affordability collapse. But let us say what so many residents, advocates, and even legislators know but hesitate to say publicly. This is not a homelessness bill. This is not an affordability bill. This is, once again, a development and zoning bill that continues the same pattern we have seen for years in Connecticut, a pattern where developers walk away smiling while our seniors, working class families, and lower income communities continue to fall into homelessness or displacement.

Months ago, I wrote about the Fair Share and Transit Oriented Development agenda and why it was being misrepresented as a form of housing justice. HB 8002 recycles many of the same concepts, just under new headings. Yes, some pieces of the bill include positive ideas. But the core structure is still a one size fits all approach that weakens public process, expands “as of right” zoning, ties municipal funding to compliance with state preferred planning models, and does very little to create truly affordable housing for those who need it most.

A bill built for suburbs, not cities

Let us be real. HB 8002 is aimed squarely at smaller towns. It creates penalties for municipalities that refuse to opt into regional housing plans or fail to submit required housing growth frameworks. It ties access to state grants to adherence with zoning models that many suburban towns have resisted for decades. The intention is to push “exclusive” municipalities to participate in housing growth, which is a fair goal in principle.

But the mechanism matters. And here, the mechanism is coercion through funding, the weakening of protest petitions, and the removal of public process in key zoning decisions. “As of right” development in transit areas, summary review for certain middle housing types, and restrictions on who can object to zoning changes combine to silence residents, especially those in communities vulnerable to displacement.

The impact of these reforms is wildly different in a town that builds one multifamily project per decade compared to a city like Stamford that has undergone one of the fastest and most aggressive building booms in the state. Stamford does not need this bill. Stamford is not a town refusing to build. Stamford has been flooded with development for fifteen years. We have built to the point of destabilizing entire neighborhoods, especially in the South End and West Side.

Families were pushed out by property taxes inflated by surrounding “luxury” buildings. Developers bought affordable homes, let them rot for years, then declared them blight to replace them with high priced rentals. Our seniors were priced out, our retirees pushed to Bridgeport, and our working class made invisible by glossy marketing brochures calling $2,500 one bedrooms “attainable.”

When the Fair Share and TOD lobbyists told us that Stamford was not building enough, many of us laughed at the absurdity. Stamford already exceeds the numbers they spent years waving in our faces. What we lack is not units. What we lack is affordability, stability, and protections for the people most at risk of becoming homeless.

Yet none of that is the focus of HB 8002.

What Is good in the bill

To be fair and honest, the bill does contain provisions worth supporting. We can acknowledge them without pretending the overall direction is right.

First, the ban on hostile architecture is long overdue. Spikes, anti-sleeping benches, aggressive landscaping to keep people away, these tools dehumanize the unhoused and create a culture of cruelty. Banning them is a moral victory.

Second, the portable shower and laundry pilot for people experiencing homelessness is a humane step forward, though still too small for the need.

Third, Section 32 prohibits the use of revenue management software that manipulates rental prices. Companies like RealPage artificially inflate rents statewide through algorithmic collusion. This measure is genuinely important.

Fourth, the bill expands Fair Rent Commissions to every municipality with at least 15,000 residents, which is crucial for tenant protection, although municipal enforcement without state oversight remains inconsistent.

Fifth, landlords can no longer evict tenants for late payment if their online rent payment system malfunctions, a small but meaningful safeguard that prevents avoidable homelessness.

Sixth, Section 43 allows housing authorities and nonprofits to purchase existing buildings and deed restrict them as affordable. This could help preserve affordability in places where speculation has turned housing into a casino.

Seventh, new safety requirements like annual elevator inspections and mobile home park fire hydrant reporting help protect elderly tenants and low income families living in neglected complexes.

All of these are good steps. But we cannot confuse these elements with the bill’s central function.

The problem at the center

Once again, the bill’s heart is a planning and zoning framework meant to accelerate development, expand “as of right” approvals, and reduce the public’s ability to contest projects that may not serve their communities.

Section 24, which weakens protest petitions, is clearly aimed at places like Stamford. Paired with “as of right” language in transit districts, it effectively removes one of the strongest tools residents have to slow or challenge harmful development. And when you combine that with the influence of groups like People Friendly Stamford, whose leadership has been tied to developer law firms that spent years suing the Board of Representatives and losing, it becomes impossible to ignore what is happening. These groups claim to care about trees and sidewalks while supporting the eminent domain taking of a Haitian family’s home after forty years of paying taxes.

Now, the state has handed these same interests a stronger legal framework and stripped residents of procedural tools that were essential in protecting neighborhoods for decades.

The Housing Crisis is not a zoning issue it’s a housing issue

If the Governor and leadership were serious about addressing homelessness, this bill would have included policies that actually prevent homelessness.

Where is the cap on rent increases, the single most effective way to prevent displacement?

Where is Just Cause eviction, which stops landlords from evicting tenants for profit.

Where is the mandate that all new construction include deeply affordable units at meaningful percentages?

Where is state-funded support for seniors and retirees on fixed incomes?

Where are anti-displacement protections for long time residents in gentrifying neighborhoods?

Where is the requirement to use vacant state-owned or city-owned buildings for housing?

Where is a statewide homelessness prevention fund?

Where is the restructuring of affordability requirements to begin with the lowest income tiers?

Where is the real commitment to ending family homelessness?

And perhaps most importantly, where is statewide funding for the Homeless to Housing (H2H) model, a pilot program under DMHAS that has shown remarkable success. H2H recognizes that anyone who has been homeless for six months has endured trauma that traditional shelter based pathways only worsen. Instead of forcing people through the shelter pipeline and then into a multi year-wait for Section 8, followed by an additional wait to find vacancy to use it, H2H places people directly into housing with supportive services. This approach bypasses bureaucratic delays, stabilizes individuals more quickly, and treats homelessness as the trauma crisis it is. HB 8002 should have funded H2H statewide. It did not.

Development over people, again

The bill creates grants, loans, and financial incentives for municipalities, but only if they play by the state’s zoning and planning rules. This is not collaboration. This is coercion. And it is not designed to help cities like Stamford that have already built more than our share. It is aimed at the suburbs, but in doing so, it strips urban residents of public process and hands developers a smoother, faster path to approval.

It is no wonder that lobbyists showed up this session with renewed energy. It is no wonder that what failed repeatedly in full sessions suddenly sailed through in a special session when legislators received the bill the day before voting. There was no deep caucus discussion, no chance to bring concerns forward, no opportunity for public testimony to shape the outcome.

This should concern every resident of Connecticut. The process was rushed, opaque, and tilted toward special interests, not toward public good.

Where do we go from here

We can no longer pretend that this pattern is accidental. Connecticut has allowed development interests to shape policy for nearly four decades, and the cost has been the slow erasure of working class communities, Black and Brown neighborhoods, and the elderly who built our cities long before developers discovered them. HB 8002 continues this trend. It gives more leverage to those who already dominate planning decisions and further marginalizes the residents who live with the consequences.

Housing justice is not achieved by fast tracking luxury apartments near train stations and calling them progress. It is not achieved by weakening public process. It is not achieved by handing out grants to municipalities only if they deregulate their zoning codes. And it is certainly not achieved by passing a one hundred page bill in a special session with less than twenty four hours for legislators to review it.

Connecticut’s housing crisis is not a crisis of zoning. It is a crisis born of political decisions that prioritize developers over people, revenue over human dignity, and “units produced” over stability and belonging. We can build all the transit adjacent towers we want, but if our seniors are still getting evicted, if our families are still being priced out, if our retirees are still sleeping in cars, then we have failed. Period.

Real leadership means confronting the interests that have captured our housing policy. It means capping rents, protecting tenants, funding H2H statewide, and mandating deeply affordable units in every major development. It means putting the lives of our most vulnerable residents ahead of the profit margins of the most powerful players in the room.

Connecticut stands at a crossroads. We can continue down the path of developer driven policy dressed up as equity, or we can finally choose the harder, more honest path, the one that puts people before profit and communities before speculation. HB 8002 chose the wrong path. It is now up to the rest of us to demand better.

Because if we do not fight for real housing justice, no one else will.

—
David Michel was a state representative for the 146th district from 2019 to 2025, a part of Stamford that includes the South End, Downtown, and Shippan.