For Town Plan Update—

P&Z Reviews Local Housing Needs

By Andrew Gorosko

In a preliminary report on housing, which is planned for eventual inclusion in the Town Plan of Conservation and Development, Planning and Zoning Commission (P&Z) members take stock of the local housing inventory and make some recommendations for the future, keyed to providing residences for a range of citizens.

The P&Z has submitted that draft housing report to the first selectman and Legislative Council for review and comment. The P&Z would later hold a public hearing on the document.

The eight-member land use panel plans to complete the updated town plan by the end of 2012. The last town plan took effect in April 2004.

According to the housing report, the 2010 US Census listed 10,061 dwellings in Newtown, of which 94 percent were occupied. Although the 6 percent vacancy rate is low, it is nearly twice the 3.2 percent vacancy rate recorded by the 2000 census.

Approximately 90 percent of local dwellings are owner-occupied, with the remainder occupied by renters, according to the report.

According to the 2010 census, 1,460 new dwellings were added to the local housing stock from 2000 to 2010, bringing the number of units up to 10,061.

Single-family houses situated on relatively large lots has been the dominant form of housing in town during the past several decades. The rapid development of formerly open land in Sandy Hook during the second half of the 1990s illustrates that type of growth.

Multifamily

The P&Z allows various forms of multifamily housing, including multifamily housing that provides an “affordable” component. In such complexes, developers are provided with a construction-density bonus allowing a higher than normal development density, which allows the sale of market-rate units to subsidize the sale of affordable units at a lower price. The affordable units may comprise about 30 percent of the dwellings in such a complex.

Riverview Condominiums, a 49-unit complex located off Bryan Lane, was the first such complex approved by the P&Z, gaining land use endorsements in 1997. It includes 13 units of owner-occupied affordable housing. Riverview was approved under the terms of the town’s original Affordable Housing Development (AHD) zoning regulations.

In 2009, the P&Z approved The River Walk on Washington Avenue in Sandy Hook under the original AHD rules.  Eight of the 24 units there would be affordable. That project has not yet been built.

Following a lengthy court fight, the P&Z approved Edona Commons in 2011, in which eight of the 26 condos would be affordable. That Sandy Hook Center project is under construction on Church Hill Road near Dayton Street.

The P&Z approved Edona Commons following a judge’s order that it do so. The developer won a court case that allows him to construct a condo complex at a higher construction density than was allowed by the original AHD regulations.   

Thus, the zoning regulations that cover Edona Commons, which were formulated by its developer and then endorsed by a judge, have become the town’s de facto AHD rules, replacing its original AHD regulations, according to the P&Z.

The town’s original AHD rules have become the model for a set of proposed regulations covering multifamily housing complexes which contain no affordable housing component.

The Future

According to the draft report, “Newtown needs more workforce housing. The town is externally focused, when it comes to employment. A significant number of jobs in Newtown are filled by people living in New Haven County communities, where housing prices are generally lower. The top employer in Newtown is the Board of Education, and the average teacher’s salary is only 49 percent of the [Newtown] median family income.”

It adds, “The current housing stock is relatively young, and geared toward the lifestyles of the married-couple families that comprise the majority of Newtown’s residents. The [housing] stock consists primarily of detached single-family, owner-occupied units. Moreover, recent development has primarily been large-lot, single-family housing. Newtown needs more diverse housing that is attractive to other [types of households], including single-parent renters.

“While housing sales have fallen over the course of the current recession, the median sales price of a single-family home in Newtown is still unaffordable to households earning up to nearly 120 percent of the area median family income. Newtown needs more housing that is affordable to moderate-income households,” according to the draft report.

The report also addresses the topics of high-density elderly housing, including nursing homes, assisted-living complexes, and age-restricted independent living complexes.

The decennial town plan is an advisory document that the P&Z uses for general guidance in its decisionmaking. The P&Z typically states whether a given development application adheres to or diverges from the tenets of the plan when approving or rejecting a project, respectively.