Rep. Scott Discusses Bills Passed Out of Housing Committee in 2025 Session

Hartford, CT. — The Housing Committee held a more than 12-hour meeting as members worked toward a deadline to vote bills out of committee for further consideration by the full General Assembly. State Representative Tony Scott (R-112) is Ranking Member on the committee. There were 35 items on the agenda, including an omnibus bill and a ‘dummy bill‘.

“At the start of the meeting, I shared my frustrations that HB 5002, the House Democrats’ priority housing legislation, had more co-sponsors than lines of text in the bill. For a proposal, especially one about how to address homelessness, to be voted on before there’s any content in it does a disservice to the community we are looking to serve,” said Rep. Scott.

Most of the committee meeting was spent talking about the first bill on the agenda, HB6889 (commonly referred to as Just Cause).

“This is stripping away the rights of housing providers. I cautioned my fellow committee members that this bill, coupled with all others being considered, will result in a loss of housing units,” noted Rep. Scott.

SB 12 includes several proposals, including a mandate that municipalities create Fair Rent Commissions. Every municipality is already allowed to do this, and Rep. Scott believes it’s just another mandate on towns like Monroe and Easton.

Rep. Scott also had a lot of questions language of proposed SB 1361 in creating a Housing Growth Fund.

“A growth score will be calculated based on the number of dwelling units approved for construction within the municipality, not necessarily actually constructed units and giving credit for something that might never happen. Points are also based on unit and not on municipal population giving cities an advantage to get funding compared to small towns,” said Rep. Scott.

Rep. Scott also raised concerns that HB 6944 (on affordable housing) has elements of Fair Share.

“There is a lot of breakouts of percentages of affordable units that are quotas, or a municipality’s fair share, in here. The bill doesn’t outline a timeline for compliance and doesn’t list the municipalities in the stated “highest 80% of net equalized per capita income” for meeting these various affordable housing unit mandates. This bill also puts those municipalities at a disadvantage for getting funding. They are being de-prioritized, instead of another municipality being prioritized, for not doing a certain thing,” said Rep. Scott.

Rep. Scott noted that there isn’t any dispute that Connecticut has a tight housing market, and rising homelessness. But there are differences in what committee members think will work best to solve these problems.

“We should incentivize builders, allocate more money for homelessness services, and address the issue of bad actors. We heard time and again at public hearings from tenants who encountered issues with these bad actors, and this should be one of the areas we’re focused on in this session,” concluded Rep. Scott.

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