by Donald Eng
HARTFORD, CT — The state Senate didn’t match the state House’s marathon 7-hour debate on a revised housing bill Thursday, but it came pretty close.
The Senate, in the last act of its special session, debated HB 8002 for more than five hours before approving it 24-10 along party lines. The House had approved it 90-56 along similarly partisan lines, with a handful of Democrats joining the Republicans in opposition.
The bill was a reworked version of a housing bill that passed the legislature during the 2025 session before Gov. Ned Lamont “reluctantly” vetoed it.
In the hours after its 1 a.m. passage, though, Lamont signalled he would sign the current version.
“Connecticut’s housing shortage is among the most severe in the country. It is driving up costs for working families, deterring businesses from investing or growing, and worsening homelessness,” Lamont said. “Simply put, the status quo is unsustainable.”
The state needs to do more to increase its housing stock, Lamont said.
“Over these last several months, I’ve consulted with state lawmakers, municipal leaders, housing advocates, and nonprofit partners to craft policies that will have a real-world impact and implement the tools we need to succeed in building more housing,” he said. “This comprehensive proposal takes strong steps toward addressing this crisis and will help Connecticut reach these goals. I look forward to signing it into law.”
The bill makes numerous changes in regards to housing and planning and zoning, according to the bill analysis. It includes dozens of sections with things like a first-time homebuyer savings program, a requirement for a town to either opt into a regional Council of Governments (COG) plan or develop their own plan to increase affordable housing and submit it to a COG every five years, a requirement for the housing department to create a plan to provide portable laundry and shower facilities for people experiencing homelessness, creation of fair rent commissions for communities larger than 15,000 residents and making it easier for owners of commercial buildings to convert their buildings for residential use.ct
Republicans had criticized the bill, which Minority Leader Stephen Harding of Brookfield called “the biggest step toward statewide zoning that has ever occurred.”
He called the bill “completely antithetical to any level of local control.”
“Your town, at some point, if this Democratic majority continues controlling this issue, is going to have Hartford determining what gets built and where it gets built,” he said.
Senate President Pro-Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, predicted the bill would be a major achievement in state policy, citing affordable housing as a state goal.
“It’s one of those areas where state policy, I think, has to take precedence of the sort of NIMBY objections that you have at the local level,” Looney said before the session. ““I think the fact that they (House Republicans) hated it so much gives an indication of how important it obviously is. And so we’re willing to deal with that … or whatever it takes.”