Local demographics are changing, and unless the town adapts to change, it cannot thrive, First Selectman Pat Llodra told about 25 people who gathered at a seminar focusing on housing trends in the state and town.Affordable Housing

Mrs Llodra spoke at the January 26 session "What's Ahead: A Look at Housing Trends in Connecticut & Newtown," which was sponsored by the town's Economic Development Commission (EDC). Many of those attending were town officials and local business people.

Representatives from the Partnership For Strong Communities and also from the Connecticut Economic Resource Center spoke at the session, as did State Senator Tony Hwang, and George Benson, town director of planning.

Mrs Llodra said, "The time of the large single-family house is leaving us," adding that, "We have to accept change, work with it, and manage it."

Mrs Llodra, however, cautioned about accepting "wholesale, fast change" in urging there be suitable   planning measures in place to best manage change.

The first selectman said that residences in the town's several lakeside communities along Lake Zoar, as well as residences in town's three mobile home parks, in effect, amount to local "affordable housing."

Those many homes, however, do not meet the state's technical definition of affordable housing because they are not deed-restricted as "affordable housing" for 30 years, she noted.

Affordable housing was a prime topic of conversation at the EDC session.

The state government requires that municipalities have at least 10 percent of their housing stock certified as affordable housing. Newtown's percentage of such housing is much lower than that.

Unless municipalities meet the 10 percent minimum requirement, they are subject to the provisions of the state's Affordable Housing Appeals Act (AHAA). Through that process, developers are allowed to create customized zoning regulations to build high-density housing complexes, either for rent or for sale, which have at least 30 percent of their dwellings designated as affordable housing.

The 26-unit Edona Commons condominium complex on Church Hill Road in Sandy Hook Center, which remains under construction, was approved in 2011 under the AHAA court appeals process. That court approval came after town land use regulators had rejected the developer's earlier proposal for the site, which had fewer than 26 dwellings.

As an alternative to the AHAA process, in early 2015, the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) created the Incentive Housing-10 (IH-10) zoning regulations, concerning high-density housing complexes that have at least 20 percent of their units designated as affordable housing. The IH-10 rules allow certain commercial uses, either at the housing complex or nearby. Also, the IH-10 rules provide the P&Z with certain leverage in terms of a given housing complex's architectural design.

In December, the P&Z approved a 180-unit rental apartment complex and nearby diner for Covered Bridge Newtown, LLC, off Covered Bridge Road in Hawleyville under the terms of the IH-10 regulations. The 180-unit complex, to be comprised of six 30-unit buildings, will include 36 units designated as affordable housing.

Newtown has a high household median income and high housing costs, but few options for workers like teachers, nurses, electricians, firefighters, and municipal employees, according to the EDC.

The IH-10 regulations are intended to provide suitable affordable housing for such people, provided that the occupants meet strict income criteria.

At the January 26 session, Kathryn Shafer, a policy analyst with the Partnership For Strong Communities, gave a talk that included statistical information on local housing.

The partnership is a nonprofit organization that works to increase the stock of affordable housing in the state, among other projects.

Based on 2013 statistics, the median annual household income in Newtown was $109,159, as compared to $82,283 in Fairfield County, and $69,461 in the state.

In 2013, Newtown contained 10,098 dwellings, of which 8,557 were owner-occupied, 961 were renter-occupied, and 580 were vacant.

Robert Santy, who heads the Connecticut Economic Resource Center (CERC), also spoke at the session. CERC is a nonprofit corporation that provides economic development services consistent with state government strategies.

Mr Santy said, "The [residential] sprawl pattern is not going to be supported in the future…It's very expensive."

During the housing boom that ran from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, many large single-family houses were constructed on large lots, a style of development that consumes much land.

In response to that trend, the Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) formulated a set of zoning regulations for "cluster housing," known as the "open space conservation subdivision" (OSCS) rules.

Although those rules lay unused for a decade, in early 2015, the P&Z approved The Preserve at Newtown in Dodgingtown, a 23-lot single-family housing development on 167 acres that preserves about half of the site as open space land for passive recreation.

Mr Benson said that for the sake of economic vitality, the town needs a suitable blend of housing types. "We need a 'balance' of housing types," he said.

Sen Hwang said that creating a suitable balance of local housing types would serve to generally raise the value of local properties.

Mr Benson observed, however, "People don't like change."

"I think, in the long-term, people will realize it's the best thing to do," Mr Benson said of diversifying the local housing stock.

If affordable housing is not created through the IH-10 zoning regulations, then it would be created through the AHAA court appeals process, he cautioned.

"Diversity is necessary, Mr Benson said.

According to the EDC, locally, there is a narrow range of housing choices for the group known as the "millennial generation," or those people who were born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. That narrow range of choices also pertains to young families seeking to move to town and to baby boomers who are seeking to downsize, according to the EDC.