I am so bummed about that. I’ve loved that space ever since Broken Umbrella Theatre performed in it at Arts & Ideas and was so happy when it became the State House.

There is too little housing of every type - there is no arguing there, single families, 2-3 families, apartment complexes. There isn’t a category in the state that isn’t far short of demand.

Why is this comment being downvoted? Is it a sin to confess it’s hard to pay the rent?

It’s a big experiment. We’ll see how it works out, whether it kills development in those neighborhoods. I hope not but in any case, we’ll learn from it.

Others say this is a Yale driven project that the community worked over good and held back until it could get some concessions. I knew that much and this article is the first I’ve read about it since that was ongoing and an update for me. I see the definition of low income has improved for affordable units to 50-percent of median. That’s better than it was

I agree, I just don’t see why a nonprofit is acting like private equity, Ok? If that’s not clear.

Down voted because? Lol

Sad to hear they'll have to move, it's a great venue

Totally

Do you realize how bad the housing shortage is in Southern CT? New Haven (and Fairfield County) need to be building as much as they can regardless of what the price is.

Also the price is set by the amount of government subsidy so if you want the new units to be more affordable you need to lobby the Lamont administration and Congress to make more subsidies available. Unfortunately Lamont is pretty conservative and Congress is even moreso.

We need like 20,000 more apartments to bring prices down

Nonprofit actually is nonprofit, but what you mean is it needs to maintain adequate operating funds to sustain its projects and itself. If I’m not mistaken ConnCAT has a for profit arm, which some nonprofits have. Not certain of that though.

Another way to mitigate segregating the poor is to dedicate half the units to lower income artists and/ or entrepreneurs, rather than market rate. It has the same outcome - it expands the cultural gravity and vibrancy of a neighborhood as well as, no, better than monied renters. This is a well known affect of the arts in neighborhoods.

Just an idea I am putting out there for consideration.

True.

There are a couple people on the sub invoking some monolithic “Black community” solidly behind this but when it was first proposed there was a great deal of conflict and activism attempting to modify as best they could what are perceived to be the negative impacts not only of this project but the overlay zone. ConnCAT has a very deep relationship with Yale, and the Black community, so, it’s not one or the other for them. Yale has plans for that area. They work closely with Yale.

Catching up on the progress I noticed this article and read up.

I’m very familiar with the position of more new units, market rate or otherwise, are a positive. I don’t think it’s enough to solve New Haven’s affordability problem. Unfortunately I worry it will barely do more than maintain the status quo.

Edit: Isn’t ConnCAT a nonprofit with a for profit arm? There are nonprofit housing developers in new haven that have built 100-percent sliding scale buildings charging 30-percent of income. Arlow, for example.

Someone wants to fancify that block of Dixwell, attracting high incomes. Arlowin Westville fancified by ensuring that the renaissance went to everyone without excluding low income

It's basically the same place but raise the medium income by like 50k. It's wild to me.

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I mean, after tax is an even higher percentage, obviously. It’s unsustainable. I posted the median income for New Haven- you can do the math. It’s dire. When a 1 br is almost 100- percent of gross median income, lol

After tax? Maybe say what you are thinking about. New haven is expensive and income is low comparatively, so, it’s a really tough situation. Plus it became expensive really quickly, which makes for sticker shock for residents. The vast majority of new haven residents are renters

If you need a recommendation, I rent from Topliff Peak Enterprises and they’ve been great. Very prompt and communicative. Requests get done ASAP

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There’s 2 main reasons to only apportion a certain % of units as “affordable” while Maintaining a majority as market rate.

First, ideologically HUD and many advocates have pushed the idea of deconcentrating poverty. The old way was to build large tracts of subsidized housing in undesirable sections of urban areas. You can see this type of development all over (parts of) town. Most of that can’t be undone, and it can be very difficult to put together a funding stack for something that isn’t 95-100% subsidized, affordable. The newer idea is that the “poor” will have better outcomes if they are mixed in all together with other economically diverse families rather than segregated. This is some of the idea behind rental vouchers as well, but as we know voucher holders struggle to break out of economically depressed sections of town too. Having a small to medium % of units in a new construction can be a really good way to further deconcentration, depending on the particulars.

Second is money. Even with millions of government dollars, it is really, really expensive to build this type of housing, a cost that is compounded often by the strings attached to that government money. Government money that usually only makes up a minority share of actual costs. Eventually a building has to generate enough income to both pay staff and service the inevitable debt on the property as well. Additionally, “non-profit” doesn’t actually mean the organization doesn’t make a profit, it just means there’s a socially beneficial bent and the profits aren’t distributed to any kind of shareholder, they stay with the organization to further the mission.

resources were restricted because leaders fail to network outside the normal circles....

We've added like 5,000 people since the last census. These people mostly still would have come here with 1,000 less units otherwise. The rent situation could be way worse

Yeah the rent is crazy here. But less units units are not going to fix that. We have an vacancy rate of 2% in the metro, it's the 2nd or 3rd lowest in the country. There are no tenant rights at a <2% vacancy rate

I'm not sure I understand your perspective. You may be missing a word or two in your post.