If you’re out talking to Bridgeporters these days, you don’t need an expert to tell you that the rent is too damn high. 

Search on Zillow for a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment and you’d have a hard time finding anything for rent under $1,600/month. According to the Partnership for Strong Communities, the common definition of an affordable home is one where the resident spends no more than 30% of their income to pay the rent. At that rate, a Bridgeport renter needs to be earning at least $60,000/year or at least $28/hour with full-time employment. Yet we know from our recent post about jobs and the economy that in Bridgeport, since 1980, our median income went from $44,000 to only $47,000. 

We are in the midst of a housing crisis. According to our August 2022 poll, 76% of all adults want Bridgeport leaders to make housing more affordable. Rents have skyrocketed during and after the COVID 19 pandemic, yet wages, salaries, and job opportunities in and around Bridgeport have stayed stagnant. More and more people are being displaced from their homes and their communities. And the Ganim administration has refused to take the issue of affordable housing seriously. 

Ganim Has Let The Fair Rent Commission Sit Inactive For 8 Years

In 2019 Bridgeport Generation Now ran a “Boards & Commissions Workshop” across the city to highlight the key commissions that were sitting inactive, including the Fair Rent Commission, Fair Housing Commission, and more. Without functioning, funded, and staffed commissions who are empowered to do the policy work laid out in our City Charter, meaningful oversight and accountability goes out the window. 

The result: Bridgeport renters are being taken advantage of by landlords, without fear of any penalties or repercussions. In yesterday’s paper, the Connecticut Post’s headline read: “Despite state law, Connecticut’s largest city doesn’t have a functioning Fair Rent Commission:”

“July 1 was the deadline that Connecticut communities of 25,000 residents or more were under state orders to enact local laws creating Fair Rent Commissions, in a major step to give more tenants some power at a time of escalating monthly rates in the region’s housing crunch… Bridgeport, the state’s most-populace city at 144,000, had such an ordinance in place for decades, but its long-inactive Fair Rent Commission exists only in name. With no active members or staff, tenants are unable to appeal rate hikes like those in other cities, including New Haven, Stamford and Hartford, where complaints are investigated, apartments are inspected, and landlords are held responsible to reduce rent hikes.“

Ganim Has Refused To Submit An Affordable Housing Plan

In addition to letting key housing commissions sit vacant, the Ganim administration remains over one year late on submitting its affordable housing plan to the state, which is required by a 2017 state law every five years. Due in 2022, Ganim’s administration didn’t present a plan to Council until January of this year. That plan was panned by Council members who saw it for what it was: a poorly executed report that was woefully short on specifics and accountability metrics:

“Several council members criticized the document — required by the state every five years, prepared by municipal staff and released earlier this month — for offering various policies but no specific goals… “I don’t see much in here in terms of accountability,” Councilman Tyler Mack told William Coleman, deputy director of the office of planning and economic development. “I don’t see anything telling us where we’re trying to go. … We need a true vision. Something articulated.”

Ganim Has Blocked Inclusionary Zoning and Affordable Housing

Finally, the Ganim administration has actively blocked including affordable housing at key development sites. In 2021, over the winter holiday between Christmas and New Year’s, Mayor Ganim tried to quietly pass a 12-year tax abatement on a 1,500-unit, market-rate luxury housing project at Steelpointe that did not include any affordable housing units.

Instead, the developers, Robert Christoph Sr. and Jr., told City Council that they gave money to a local non-profit organization, Bridgeport Neighborhood Trust, to build 44 affordable housing units at a completely separate location. This is bad housing policy, as there is zero accountability on the Christophs or the City’s part that the affordable housing is actually built.

Case in point: As of June 2023, although delayed by ground contamination, the Christophs are expected to break ground in the coming months on their luxury housing even as BNT’s low income project remains stalled.

What also went unreported about at the time is that under former Mayor Bill Finch, in 2012, the city of Bridgeport created a “special district” for the Steelpointe developers that allows for the next 30 to 50-plus years the vast majority of the district’s property taxes to go back into the district to pay for their debt and infrastructure improvements. These are taxes that would’ve gone to our city budget to fund our schools, roads, etc. As Niels Heilmann wrote in an op-ed on January 9th, 2022, “Bridgeporters are sacrificing these taxes so that the developers can sell large bonds successfully.”

Long story short: The Christophs did not need the tax break for the luxury housing project to go forward. And their refusal to include affordable housing units at Steelpointe is exactly how structural racism and housing segregation continues to be perpetuated and weaponized against Black and Brown people in our city and country. 

Other Cities Are Outpacing Bridgeport And Making Bold Reforms

In January of 2022, the City of New Haven adopted a new inclusionary zoning law aimed at developers who wish to take advantage of the city’s market-rate apartment boom. The law, which passed 25-1, was overwhelmingly approved by New Haven’s Board of Alders after being one of Mayor Elicker’s top legislative priorities. 

“The inclusionary zoning … updates the city’s zoning code to require new and significantly rehabbed apartment buildings citywide to set aside a certain percentage of units at rents affordable to tenants earning no more than 50 percent of the area median income (AMI). That federally defined income level currently shakes out to around $51,450 per year for a New Haven family of four… In exchange for constructing those below-market-rent apartments, developers can wrack up a host of ​“incentives” — from 10-year local tax abatements to minimum parking waivers to permission to build smaller units than otherwise allowed by existing zoning law.”

Sadly, the Ganim administration keeps giving Bridgeport away to developers, accelerating the pace of gentrification and the rising cost of rent. Most of the higher-profile redevelopments that have been approved by his administration are 100% market-rate apartments, including the extremely controversial 177-unit building being constructed at Mario Testa’s former catering hall. In fact, at the meeting with Council where Mayor Ganim’s housing plan was presented for the first time, it was clear that the Mayor does not support inclusionary zoning:

“Coleman sought to steer council members away from that last “inclusionary zoning” recommendation, arguing the time may not yet be right for such a strict approach in Bridgeport, where typically officials instead negotiate building affordably-priced units in certain housing developments.”

On September 12th, It’s Time To Vote For Change

Joe Ganim’s time is up. Now it’s time we get serious and elect Marilyn Moore as our next Mayor. She is the only candidate who has a strong track record of fighting for affordable housing. 

In 2023, she was named Chair of the Housing Committee and introduced housing legislation, under Senate Bill 4, to address affordable housing in Connecticut, including:

  • Creating a 4-year pilot program with $150 million that would retrofit older buildings in Connecticut and improve their energy efficiency
  • Introducing a renters’ bill of rights
  • Respite housing for homeless
  • And a moratorium on rent increases during a declared public health emergency. 

You can read more about Marilyn Moore’s housing platform on her website at mooreforbridgeport.com. On Tuesday, September 12th, let’s elect a new Mayor who will finally build a city that is truly run for and by the people.