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Woodbridge Housing Application Meant To Challenge Exclusionary Zoning Laws

Courtesy of Pixabay

Civil rights advocates say zoning laws are exclusionary in the town of Woodbridge, Connecticut. So they’re challenging them with an application for housing that goes against the town’s rules.

Woodbridge bans most multi-family housing. And zoning laws say you need a minimum of two acres to build a house in most of town. Advocates say this cuts off the mostly wealthy town to lower-income families who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

Erin Boggs is with the Open Communities Alliance.

“We’re asking the town to take a look at their zoning and overhaul it, modernize it, bring it into compliance with the law,” Boggs said.

State law requires towns to offer a certain amount of affordable housing. The group — along with students from a Yale Law School clinic — applied to build a four-unit development on a plot of land zoned for one family.

“We’re asking them to allow multi-family housing like this, small-scale multi-family housing in single-family lots when the proposed housing meets all the other requirements that are typically applied to a single-family home,” Boggs said.

Boggs said she hopes advocates can have a productive dialogue with the town’s government and its residents that will make Woodbridge more inclusive for low-income families.

A staff member for the town’s planning and zoning department said the commission had no comment.

Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.