In 2025, New Haven Said Yes To “Build, Build, Build”2025, New Haven Said Yes To “Build, Build, Build”
Sylvia Cooper was one of hundreds of lifelong New Haveners that celebrated moving into a new home this year. Credit: MONA MAHADEVAN PHOTO
At the national YIMBY conference held in New Haven, people from across the political aisle — including North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong — embraced the “build, build, build” movement.
At the same time, homeowners, such as Newhallville resident Lossie Gorham (center), fought to protect their beloved green spaces from housing development.
This year, New Haven decided to “build, build, build.”
The city hosted a national conference for pro-homes advocates of the “Yes In My Backyard” (YIMBY) movement, approved a bill aimed at making it easier to build homes in downtown, and adopted a 10-year comprehensive plan that calls for increasing the housing supply, especially of deeply affordable homes.
Amid the growing momentum for the pro-homes movement, across the city, small groups of residents have challenged proposed developments in their neighborhoods, bringing concerns about density, aesthetics, and parking to local zoning meetings. At the same time, developers, burdened with tariffs on construction materials and high borrowing costs, have struggled to secure regulatory approvals in a timely manner and finance projects that meet the city’s affordability requirements.
These conflicts unfolded as the city confronts what its comprehensive plan, Vision 2034, terms a “severe affordable housing crisis.”
Long a testing ground of bold, new planning ideas, this year, New Haven broadly agreed with the YIMBY call to build more housing, even as debates flared over what those homes should look like, where they should go, and who should get to live in them.
New Haven Says Yes To Development
In September, the city hosted YIMBYtown 2025, a national conference that brought over 1,000 pro-homes advocates across the political spectrum to the Omni Hotel. On the conference’s second day, Mayor Justin Elicker urged the city to embrace the “YIMBY posture” of being “pro-homes, pro-growth, and pro-inclusive growth.”
The conference featured panels on the environmental benefits of dense housing development, the increasingly bipartisan composition of the “build build build” movement, and the push for single-stair reform by those looking to create distinctive buildings and family-sized apartments.
A month later, the city passed Vision 2034, a comprehensive plan that calls for expanding the housing supply. In a section titled “Great Places to Live,” the report recommends reviewing zoning requirements for parking and density, encouraging more infill developments, and allowing for a wider range of residential models, including single-room occupancy units. It also emphasizes the need to guard against gentrification, expand the supply of deeply affordable homes, and increase support for residents without stable housing.
The city then adopted a pro-homes policy in December, when the Board of Alders passed an upzoning bill that permits denser, taller apartment buildings and more types of residential models in downtown. The new law — Downtown For All — affects an area currently regulated by the Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) Ordinance, which was passed by the Board of Alders in 2022. (The IZ, suggested during the Toni Harp administration and crafted by the Elicker administration, mandates that new developments set aside a certain percentage of affordable units in exchange for incentives like local tax abatements, minimum parking waivers, and density boosts. More on the IZ below.)
Gov. Ned Lamont, who was not invited to YIMBYtown 2025, praised both Downtown For All and Elicker’s leadership in November. Earlier this year, Lamont had been lambasted by pro-homes advocates and New Haven-based Democrats, including State Rep. Roland Lemar and State Sen. President Pro Tem Martin Looney, for vetoing an ambitious housing bill that would have eased local zoning restrictions and curtailed municipal power to block new developments.
In late November, Lamont signed a narrower version of the law, which he described as allowing towns to “take the lead” on housing development. On the first day of his third-term campaign, Lamont visited New Haven and declared that Elicker’s stance on housing exemplifies the kind of local-led, pro-housing approach supported by the revised bill.
And Lots of Development Happened
As the city worked to clear regulatory hurdles for future development, it also spent 2025 welcoming more than 1,000 new homes to New Haven. According to the Office of Building Inspection & Enforcement, 1,018 residential units received Certificates of Occupancy between Jan. 1 and Dec. 2, 2025, a designation issued when a home is deemed ready for residents.
City and state officials celebrated those new homes with a steady run of ribbon-cutting ceremonies. At the end of 2024, they welcomed 200 new apartments at the ex-Coliseum site, a project that had been five years in the making. In July, officials gathered in Dixwell to mark the official opening of a 176-unit, mixed-income complex, and in June, they toured 18 market-rate apartments in the former ACME Furniture building in the Ninth Square. That same month, officials convened in the West River neighborhood to welcome 56 affordable, townhouse-style residences at the Curtis Cofield Estates, followed by the debut of 64 below-market-rate apartments at a former laundry facility in November.
On the ownership side, in December, the nonprofit Neighborhood Services of New Haven (NHS) opened the doors to four two-family homes on Hazel Street, all of which are income-restricted and under contract with first-time homebuyers.
As the city welcomed new housing, its development pipeline continued to grow. In 2025, the city approved 948 residential building permits, advancing Elicker’s goal of adding 10,000 new homes to the city’s housing supply over the next decade.
Projects in the works include 25 new apartments on Court Street, 112 homes at a former extended-stay hotel on Long Wharf Drive, and 81 renovated units on George Street. The largest recently-approved proposal calls for building 462 apartments, including 124 below-market-rate units, atop underused parking lots on State Street.
Meanwhile, construction has already begun on 150 affordable apartments at an ex-lighting factory in the Hill and 168 market-rate apartments in a former commercial-industrial corridor in Wooster Square. Across town, a local redevelopment team began restoring Dixwell Plaza, which will eventually host 186 mixed-income apartments and a 69,000 square-foot headquarters for ConnCAT.
That’s not to say the city went YIMBY on every development this year.
In one backyard, the Elicker administration has continued to keep the power shut off at Rosette Village, where six tiny shelters house eight people in the Hill. In November, the mayor justified the decision by pointing to the structures’ safety deficiencies and state code violations, and then directed Rosette residents to the city’s programs for the unhoused, including seven emergency shelters, four daytime navigation hubs, and various crisis support groups.
Across the city, the Building Department issued a cease-and-desist order in March against an unapproved “rooming house” at a luxury apartment complex in Wooster Square.
Even when opposition wasn’t project-specific, the city’s broader approval processes have slowed some developments.
In one case, a proposal to build three market-rate apartments and one affordable unit in Wooster Square was delayed by seven months of winding through a half dozen meetings of the Historic District Commission (HDC), Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), and City Plan Commission (CPC). The project eventually won site plan approval in December, which, according to attorney Ben Trachten, will make it the first new residential construction in the Wooster Square Local Historic District since it was established in 1970.
Yes, But Make It Affordable
The Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) Ordinance, meanwhile, has not yet spurred much affordable development.
As of Oct. 27, city spokesperson Lenny Speiller said no IZ apartments had been constructed. At the time, 696 apartments, including 104 below-market-rate units, were in the works.
The slow pace partly reflects broader pressures on the home-building industry, including the rising cost of materials and shortage of skilled labor. Given the thinner margins on affordable homes, those factors may yield particularly large effects on projects subject to the IZ. (Many mixed-income developments, both inside and outside the IZ areas, already rely on an abundant pool of state and local subsidies.)
At a policy level, cities and researchers have started to question whether inclusionary zoning — long viewed as a tool for preventing displacement and supporting low-income residents — stymies development, especially when not paired with zoning reform that makes it easier and cheaper to build.
Austin, for instance, has successfully reduced rents by relaxing zoning rules and creating incentives for below-market-rate units. Meanwhile, Minneapolis eliminated single-family zoning and imposed an affordability mandate for larger projects, managing to keep rents flat even as housing costs soared throughout the state.
In San Francisco, where developments of ten or more units are subject to affordability requirements, housing costs rank among the highest in the country. In part, that reflects the city’s low housing production, widely attributed to its restrictive zoning code and lengthy approval timelines. (In response to sustained advocacy from the pro-homes movement, San Francisco passed zoning reform in December allowing taller, denser residential buildings in more neighborhoods.)
In New Haven, elected officials have emphasized affordability as a requirement of new development. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony in November, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers said she would support development in her ward only if it included affordable units. Over the summer, Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison similarly pressed for more below-market-rate apartments in a mixed-income complex pitched for her ward.
This year’s zoning overhaul, Downtown For All, is designed to increase affordable development in the IZ areas.
Elicker has acknowledged that there are open questions over whether the IZ works. At the signing of Downtown For All and at YIMBYtown 2025, Elicker said that while the IZ has appealed to small-scale homebuilders, fewer large projects have taken advantage of the incentives. In an interview with the Independent in October, he noted that most affordable development is happening with support of local and state subsidies, not through the incentives of the IZ.
“It’s not helpful to have an Inclusionary Zoning ordinance that’s really strong and nothing gets built,” said Elicker in October, “because then you have no IZ affordable units being built.”
NIMBYs Showed Up And Spoke Out
Even as the city advanced a series of pro-development initiatives, this year, opposition to new housing surfaced in neighborhoods across the city.
That dynamic reflects a common pattern in local land-use politics, where small, vocal groups dominate local zoning meetings with anti-development concerns, even as national surveys show broad support for expanding the housing supply.
In New Haven, concerns around density, aesthetics, and parking animated many such meetings, but they rarely proved sufficient to stop projects outright.
In Newhallville, when the Livable City Initiative (LCI) proposed building five duplexes, four two-family homes, and one single-family home atop city-owned land, Starr Street homeowners successfully delayed the project, claiming it would overcrowd the neighborhood and take away their beloved green space.
The Starr Street proposal eventually passed the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA), allowing the city to move forward with building 10 new, below-market-rate houses.
Those same density-related concerns lost in Wooster Square, where Lyon Street homeowners, concerned about the size and height of a proposed 112-unit complex, urged a court to block construction. The judge sided with the City Plan Commission and allowed the project to move forward.
On a different corner of the city, Goatville residents, worried about the character and integrity of their neighborhood, spoke against the construction of 27 new apartments in an ex-firehouse on Edwards Street. The City Plan Commission approved the development’s site plan, though one resident is now suing to stop the proposal from moving forward.
Density concerns have also been raised in the suburbs. In Woodbridge, suburbanites slammed a proposal for 96 new apartments on the town line between Woodbridge and New Haven, claiming that such a dense development would lead to excess traffic and environmental issues. After a half dozen meetings, the complex was approved by the Town Plan & Zoning Commission (TPZ) last Thursday. Given the intensity of public opposition to the development, the TPZ plans to review the town’s zoning regulations in January to prohibit similar projects moving forward.
In Orange, Airbnb-type rentals were banned in December. The decision was sparked by one overcrowded “party” house — owned by New Haven real estate investors — that attracted dozens of nuisance complaints.
In addition to density concerns, residents have raised questions around aesthetics in many local meetings. A mixed-income building proposed for the Ninth Square, for example, has met resistance from nearby condo-owners, who in October criticized the building’s “ugly” facade — as well as the loss of their parking lot and dumpster alley. Likewise, a proposal to build four new apartments in Wooster Square was delayed by historic preservationists for months, as the Historic District Commission (HDC) considered the development’s aesthetic compatibility with the existing neighborhood.
Parking concerns, meanwhile, sometimes led to changes in the shape and size of proposed developments. For one project, residents in July urged the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) to require more parking at a dilapidated Edgewood Avenue house, arguing that spots in the Dwight neighborhood are usually taken by Yale employees. That same month, neighbors criticized the Oyster Harbor Village, proposed for the Fair Haven waterfront, for not including enough residential and commercial parking spots.
Contrary to those pro-parking moves, in December, the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) rejected a request to accommodate on-site parking at a proposed development on Orchard Street, even though, argued the applicant, the street is usually filled with parked cars. Attorney Ben Trachten said the landlord plans to move forward with constructing four new apartments, though in a worse configuration and with no on-site parking.
Ready. Set. Shovel! In September at Wooster Square. Thomas Breen photo