Affordable Housing Plan Scorecards: Tolland County
In 2017 the Connecticut legislature passed General Statutes Sec. 8-30j, requiring every municipality to adopt an affordable housing plan by June 1, 2022. This legislation responded to the need to create more affordable homes in Connecticut and the desire for municipalities to play a lead role in planning for affordability locally. While developing their plans, communities have the opportunity to come together to discuss how and where to create more affordable homes at the local level.
The Center for Housing Equity and Opportunity Eastern Connecticut (CHEO) partnered with Desegregate CT and Regional Plan Association (RPA) to develop scorecards assessing the plans in Tolland County, with respect to the process undertaken to develop the plan, and the plan’s ability to effectively assess housing need and promote action. This work builds on the affordable housing plan scorecards developed for New London County in October 2023, and the affordable housing plan scorecards developed for Fairfield County by the Fairfield County Center for Housing Opportunity in September 2022.
Scores
Click on the town icons below to access their full scorecard. For a full breakdown of how points were allocated, please refer to this Appendix. Scores were developed by comparing affordable housing plans to the recommendations in the Planning for Affordability in Connecticut guidebook published by the Connecticut Department of Housing in 2020.
Summary
Tolland County experiences the effects of Connecticut’s severe lack of affordable housing. Within the county, nearly half of homerenters and a quarter of homeowners with a mortgage are cost-burdened, spending 30% or more of their income on housing-related costs. As of June 2024, 11 out of 13 towns in Tolland County have adopted plans. These plans represent an opportunity for towns and cities to demonstrate their commitment to meaningful local action that will create more affordable homes.
According to the Planning for Affordability in Connecticut guidebook published by the Connecticut Department of Housing in 2020, town plans should outline tangible steps for increasing access to housing for people of all income levels, backgrounds, and stages of life in all communities.
Through the planning process, towns are expected to bring together a diverse group of community members, including renters, homeowners, and members of the local workforce who contribute to the vitality of communities whether or not they can afford to live locally. This group should identify shared values, determine local and regional housing needs and barriers to access, and develop clear goals and implementation strategies to expand housing opportunities using zoning, funding, and an array of other tools. Towns are also expected to acknowledge the inequities that currently exist in how decisions around affordable housing are made, and seek to address those inequities with more inclusive planning. Each municipal affordable housing plan should provide clarity on what type of housing is needed, how much is needed, and where it should be located. Drawing on regional and national best practice recommendations outlined in Planning for Affordability, the scorecards assess how well Tolland County towns have delivered on these goals.
Methodology
CHEO, Desegregate CT, and RPA scored the housing plans by comparing them to the recommendations in the Connecticut Department of Housing’s Planning for Affordability in Connecticut guidebook.
These scorecards are based on a weighted scoring system that corresponds with priorities outlined in the guidebook. Plans were given a score of 0-5 overall, and categories for scoring were broken down as follows:
Submission of plan: 0-10%
Planning process: 0-15%
Needs assessment: 0-30%
Recommended actions: 0-45%
A plan that earns a score of 5 has followed the guidebook nearly to a tee. This is an actionable plan developed by a diverse group of stakeholders reflecting meaningful outreach that acknowledges local housing history and current needs and proposes concrete actions to advance affordability, each with a discrete time frame and responsible party. A plan that earns a score of 1 has few, if any, of these components.
Results
In Tolland County, 11 out of 13 municipalities have approved a local affordable housing plan and submitted it to the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management (OPM). The 11 municipalities include Andover, Bolton, Columbia, Coventry, Ellington, Hebron, Mansfield, Stafford, Tolland, Union, and Vernon. As of June, 2024, Somers and Willington did not submit a plan.
We analyzed these 11 plans using the scoring system outlined above. The average community achieved a score of 2 out of 5. Ellington achieved the highest score of 3 (with 62.5 out of 100 points). Union received the lowest score of 1.5 (with 28 out of 100 points).
Because scores reflect three separate areas of achievement - Planning Process, Housing Needs Assessment, and Action & Implementation- even though some plans received low scores overall, encouraging actions and trends appear in most local plans. For example:
Most towns included a land use / zoning map identifying areas for housing and other uses.
Hebron emphasized the importance of housing security by referencing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a concept in psychology that suggests all people have innate needs upon which all else rests, with shelter being a “basic” need. Hebron’s plan explicitly states that providing a diverse mix of housing types helps ensure all people can find housing that fits their needs.
Most towns included a thorough assessment of their existing housing stock.
Bolton proposed Incentive Housing Overlay Zones - “a strong tool that encourages the establishment of Regulations to provide for housing that is deed restricted to Affordable levels” - and identified an area that could be eligible.
At the same time, most Tolland County communities have more work to do to bring invested and inclusive leadership to the table to shape decisions and recommendations regarding affordable housing. Almost none of the plans provided information on the diversity of the affordable housing committee or group that led the planning process (by age, race, income, housing tenure, etc.). Few of the towns designed communications materials to make the plans accessible and equitable to a diverse range of stakeholders.
It is important to acknowledge that communities embarked on this process from different starting points with differing capacity and access to resources. Also, these scorecards may not reflect all the actions a community is taking to expand housing opportunities if those actions are not explicitly included in the plan.
Ultimately, the success of these local affordable housing plans will lie in their implementation. A community’s plan may include a terrific list of proposed actions, none of which move out of the idea stage. Or a community’s plan may include just three concrete actions to create more homes, but all are implemented in full within the next five years. CHEO will continue to assist communities as they implement and adjust these plans, and will track progress on implementation throughout the region.
What’s Next?
Reviewing the town plans and highlighting their creativity and strengths, as well as their shortcomings or omissions, is the first step. How can we move from plan to implementation, and from words to action to create more affordable homes in all communities? What can these plans achieve, and what can they not achieve? How can they be supported and supplemented by actions at other levels of government?
Now that there is consensus around the real and pressing need for more affordable homes across Connecticut, we must all work to translate these plans into action so that our communities and our region become more prosperous, equitable, and sustainable for the next generation. CHEO stands with Tolland County towns to help turn plans into actions.
Appendix
Detailed information about the allocation of points in each category and total plan scores is available in this Appendix.
