by Mona Mahadevan he New Haven independent
Asking rent increased meaningfully after the Covid-19 pandemic, per a chart included in the 2034 comp plan.
Reducing parking minimums for housing creation, completing Union Station’s transition to geothermal energy, supporting new residential developments of fewer than ten units, and making the city’s waterways more kayak-able.
Those are just four of the many urban planning ideas outlined in a 219-page draft of New Haven’s latest 10-year comprehensive plan.
A draft of that plan, titled Vision 2034, was published on June 5. The City Plan Commission took the draft up for discussion last Wednesday at its latest regular meeting, during which commissioners pushed for more neighborhood-specific goals and outreach efforts.
Once adopted by the Board of Alders, the final version of the document will serve as a guide for city leadership on everything from supporting new small-scale developments to enabling recreational use of nearby waterways to implementing the plan for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service.
Connecticut law requires cities and towns to detail their conservation and development priorities in the form of a comprehensive plan at least once every ten years. Over the last eighteen months, thousands of New Haveners participated in the once-a-decade occasion to collectively envision their ideal city.
As it stands, the report consists of six topic areas: Great Places to Live, Economic Opportunity for All, Move Together, Climate & Ecological Connections, Arts & Cultural Identity, and Civic Services & Experiences.
“Vision 2034, New Haven’s Comprehensive Plan, is both a vision of the future and a guide on how to reach that vision,” the report begins. “It will be a decision-making and policy guide for matters related to land use, housing, transportation, sustainability, economic development, neighborhood planning, public investments, and capital improvement programs. Equity and resilience are guiding principles of the plan.”
Read the full draft report here. It was produced by FHI Studio/IMEG and guided by a steering committee made up of city stewards and officials.
The public can submit feedback on the draft document to cpc@newhavenct.gov or ERoseWilen@newhavenct.gov through July 24, when the Elicker administration plans to submit the document to the Board of Alders, Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), and South Central Regional Council of Governments (SCRCOG) for further public hearings and review. The final deadline for approval by the City Plan Commission of the new ten-year comp plan is Nov. 18.
Housing: More Small-Scale Devs; Less “Excessive Parking Requirements”
Only 1% of New Haven is mixed-use.
Some of the report’s most detailed recommendations can be found in its housing section.
That section opens with a statistic: More than half of New Haven residents spend more on housing than they can afford.
The city has helped address the housing affordability crisis by issuing 3,200 new permits in just the last five years — more than any other city in the state, according to the report. Of those permits, a majority have been for buildings with 15 or more units.
To build on that progress, the report recommends a comprehensive overhaul of the New Haven Zoning Ordinance. It urges a review of “parking, lot size, density, setback, building coverage, building height, and floor-area-ratio standards,” with the goal of supporting more mixed-income, high-density housing. The report also suggests allowing for small dwelling units, such as single-occupancy rooms and small stand-alone units (e.g., tiny houses). To protect from gentrification, the report calls on city officials to consider “small area planning” for high-risk neighborhoods.
It further proposes partnering with private and nonprofit developers to fill small pockets of the city’s unused land with buildings of fewer than ten dwelling units. That would involve expanding sources of funding for small-scale developments.
“Current market conditions are most favorable to large-scale development projects, which are most often led by developers with considerable financial resources and borrowing capacity,” reads a section of the report called, “Support the small-scale development.”
“Small-scale development with ten or fewer dwelling units is financially challenging and fewer developers are willing to take on this scale of development. Most of the City’s housing built prior to 1945 was built by homebuilders and small developers that created only a few homes per year. Today, many properties in New Haven are suited to small infill and redevelopment projects. The City partners with a number of local non-profits in developing these lots but could expand to new small, locally owned private and nonprofit partners, as well as expanding funding streams beyond federal funding for the City’s Gap Financing Program to support this small-scale development. The City should also consider preapproved development plans where standardized plans go through a streamlined permitting process.”
While broadly focused on increasing the housing supply, the report places special emphasis on housing for people with extremely low incomes. It suggests that Elm City Communities, New Haven’s public housing authority, increases its support of deeply affordable developments. The department’s current pipeline includes St. Luke’s project on Whalley Avenue, a redevelopment on the former Church Street South site near Union Station, and hundreds of mixed-income apartments to come to the Ninth Square.
In addition, the report encourages city officials to work with the South Central Regional Council of Governments, noting that New Haven “cannot be the only provider of affordable housing in the region.”
As for the connection of parking and housing, the report’s “Future Zoning Work” section states that the city should “[r]educe barriers on housing creation and projects that must go through the
Board of Zoning Appeals for bulk, yard, density, and parking variances.” That same section calls on the city to “[a]mend the parking regulations to reduce excessive parking requirements.”