Current Potential for Multi-Family Housing Rating by Municipality
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Rating Scale
0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0
Lightest Darkest
Explanation
This map shows the current potential for multi-family housing in Connecticut. The potential assigned to each town reflects a rating from 0 to 2 (2 being the highest potential) created by Adam Taub, based upon the existing zoning maps in each municipality. Multi-family housing signifies dwellings for two or more families. These could be apartment complexes, condos, or houses divided up into multiple units (such as one family per floor).
In towns with a high rating (darker shading), there is a greater possibility that multi-family housing will be developed. Towns with a lower rating (lighter shading) are less likely to see new multi-family developments, and towns with a rating of zero do not permit multi-family housing.
The rating on potential for multi-family housing is based upon each municipality’s zoning regulations. Zoning can be exclusionary in the sense that it prohibits the development of certain kinds of housing, whether directly or indirectly. Some towns (such as Rocky Hill, Hartland, and Bethany) simply do not allow multi-family units, but indirect exclusions are more common. Examples of zoning practices that indirectly restrict the development of multi-family housing are minimum lot sizes, maximum density for multi-family units, upper limits on the number of bedrooms in a unit, and special review procedures for the approval of multi-family construction. These all work to increase the cost of building multi-family housing and therefore discourage developers from investing in them. The more exclusionary zoning provisions a town has, the lower its potential for multi-family housing.
Multi-family housing is typically more affordable than a single-family home. Therefore, towns with a larger quantity of multi-family housing units will also have a larger population of low- and moderate-income families. In Connecticut, these families are also disproportionately minorities. The effect of the disparity in potential for multi-family housing, then, is to limit the places where low-income and minority residents can afford to live. Developers will build more multi-family units in the towns (such as Hartford, Waterbury, and New Haven) with a high current potential rating because it will be more economical. The greater availability of multi-family units, in turn, will attract an increasing number of low- and moderate-income families. On the other hand, developers will be unlikely to construct multi-family units in the towns with low ratings (such as Middlefield, Granby, and Haddam) because it will be relatively more expensive. The low availability of multi-family units will result in a smaller population of low- and moderate-income families. Over time, this will result (and has resulted) in the concentration of low- and moderate-income and minority families in a few towns and the concentration of higher income families in the other towns.
Legal zoning regulations can, therefore, result in economic and social segregation.
The data presented was collected by the Connecticut Fair Housing Center and was last updated in September 2011.