Malloy: Public Housing Renewal Key to a ‘Connecticut Rebirth’

No mistaking this: Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is passionate about his $300 million plan for renovating rundown state-funded public and subsidized housing  in the state and it showed Friday.

Malloy was scheduled to give some opening remarks to the Connecticut Mortgage Bankers Association’s housing symposium in Hartford. But he ended up spending nearly 40 minutes pushing his vision for revitalizing and adding to the stock of housing for low- and moderate-income households, the elderly and the disabled.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy at Connecticut Mortgage Bankers housing symposium. Photo by Kenneth R. Gosselin/The Hartford Courant

“I’ve been a big advocate of affordable housing and highly critical of the state’s approach to the retention of affordable housing,” Malloy, the former Stamford mayor, said to reporters after his appearance at The Lyceum. “I watched as mayor the declining quality of housing in my own city, and I believe that is one of the chief impediments, that is the declining quality of housing in many of our smaller and larger cities.”

He added: “If you are going to have a Connecticut rebirth and certainly we want to see that, it has to involve affordable housing.”

Malloy said the challenge is daunting: as many as 17,000 units aren’t fit for occupancy.

The plan, which would require legislative and state bond commission approval, calls for $330 million in bonding over the next 10 years to renovate existing housing and boost new construction. The plan would expand on a commitment of $130 million last year.

Together, the funds would provide nearly $500 million over the next decade — the largest commitment since the early 1990s.

Friday, Malloy said the effort would involve both demolition and reconstruction as well as new construction. The new construction would particularly focus on subsidized congregate housing for the elderly, which also has languished in recent decades.

The state can’t do the job alone and, if funding is approved, would look to form public-private partnerships because of the scope of the work of the work is so vast, Malloy said.

Malloy said the federal HOPE VI program is one that Connecticut should model more aggressively. The program replaces rundown public housing, occupied exclusively by low-income families, with redesigned mixed-income housing while providing vouchers to enable some original residents to rent, private market-rate apartments.

“That’s what we did in Stamford with respect to the replacement of a particular project,” Malloy said. “So, I want to do that in additional complexes around the state.”