Response to Affordable Housing Crisis in Doubt as Legislature Has Yet to Revise Budget

With the recent decision by the state legislature’s Appropriations Committee not to offer an Appropriations Budget to make adjustment to the existing biennial budget for the coming 2025 fiscal year, a number of policy areas that advocates say are in need of action and accompanying budget adjustments face uncertainty with just four weeks remaining in the 2024 legislative session. 

Partnership for Strong Communities, a statewide organization advocating for affordable housing in Connecticut, points out that the housing needs of Connecticut residents “remain unchanged regardless of decisions by the legislature. The state has a deficit of more than 90,000 homes affordable and available to our lowest income renters.”

They point to the following data to underscore the need for state action: 

• The state's Rental Assistance Program (RAP) currently serves approximately 6,700 households. Rents have increased by 20% since 2021 and as a result the RAP program will likely run a deficit in this fiscal year.  

• Without additional funding, the state would provide fewer families with necessary rental assistance to stabilize their housing.

•  You need to earn $31.93/hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment in CT, far above the average CT hourly wage of $22.29. 

• Research demonstrates that rental assistance vouchers increase housing stability, household income, reduce racial disparities, and improve health and educational outcomes for all members of a household's family.  

• Nationally, rental assistance vouchers lift over 3 million people over the poverty line. When a family can afford housing, they can afford other necessities including food, medical care, and clothing.   

• Ensuring households have access to meeting all their basic needs also reduces the likelihood of them relying on government funded systems of care, like emergency hospital stays, incarceration, or homeless shelters.   

States that invest in programs aimed at increasing housing stability, the Partnership for Strong Communities points out, see returns on their investment over time. They note that “when families are stably housed, they are more likely to experience better health, educational, and social outcomes, all of which can lead to more active and healthy local economies.” 

They also point to data regarding the State’s Rental Assistance Program (RAP) that indicates applicants can remain on the RAP waitlist for years. The state’s voucher waitlist has been closed since 2014, they point out, and “when it last opened in August of that year, it was open for only two weeks, and received over 86,000 applications.

“The RAP waitlist is cleaned up every 3 years. Most often, people are pulled from the waitlist if there is a change in household income, or if an individual passes away. Currently, death is the most common reason an applicant is removed the waitlist.”