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If you own a home in Connecticut, you’ve lost 30% of your home’s value.  That $1 million you invested in your home in Connecticut five or more years ago is worth $300k less than it would fetch in most other states.  You can thank Connecticut Democrats for your lost appreciation. 

To distract you, Democrats have invented an imaginary housing shortage. Don’t be fooled. Literally every data point says that the only real housing crisis is your lost $300k, which is caused by a complete absence of job and economic growth in Connecticut.  The Democrats’ imaginary “affordable housing crisis” simply doesn’t exist.  This is true at the national level as well as the local level.

Connecticut has a total of 3,000 homeless. This makes the homelessness rate in CT 80% LOWER than New York or California, and 50% LOWER than Massachusetts.  Incredibly, Democrats claim we need an additional 121,000 affordable housing units.

To put that in perspective, 121,000 new homes with an average of 2.6 people living in each home would be enough to relocate the entire population of Bridgeport AND the entire population of New Haven AND still leave room for a quarter of the population of Hartford.  Such an oversupply of housing would decimate your home’s value.

Democrats claim that more affordable housing will spur economic growth, and that the lack of low-cost housing is a constraint on our economy. But how does this work? Say we build all this housing for workers who aren’t here and jobs that don’t exist, will the availability of these homes entice companies to move to Connecticut?  Will companies come despite the second highest taxes in the country and despite the unfriendly regulatory environment and despite the highest energy costs in the country? 

In fact, why would any company which employs low-wage earners, such as those slated for the 121,000 homes, come to Connecticut given that Connecticut has the third highest minimum wage in the country?  Or look at it from the reverse angle: Is a lack of housing for low wage earners what drove so many companies to close up shop or leave Connecticut?  Of course not.

In reality, 66% of CT residents own their own homes and homes are the major source of retirement savings and wealth for most. Homes are 57% of the typical household’s savings.  In CT because of Democrat policies which have stifled growth, housing appreciation trails most of the country, and this hurts all homeowners.  This lack of growth in home prices means that the $300k you lost is not available for your retirement, or for your kids’ college or for that trip you’d like to take.

And, home values and homelessness are not the only data points which speak against a housing shortage.  Lots of other data also shows there is no housing shortage in Connecticut:

• Housing costs per square foot are lower than NY or MA, and on par with FL;
• Rents in Connecticut are the lowest in the region;
• Connecticut median home prices are the lowest in the region;
• Population is flat since 1990;
• More people are leaving than arriving even after the pandemic; and
• Connecticut is twice as AFFORDABLE as any nearby region according to the Federal Reserve.

Clearly, there is less demand in Connecticut than elsewhere.  This is because there has been no economic growth in CT for 30 years.  Adjusted for inflation, Connecticut GDP is flat since 2008 while the rest of the country has grown 34%, and CT has the same number of people employed as in 2000. Thanks to the Democrats’ superficially well-meaning but destructive policies, Connecticut never recovered from the 2008 recession.  Yelling about “affordable housing” is more bad policy as well as a distraction.

And there’s this:  if those 121,000 homes are built and occupied either by a mass exodus from our cities and/or an influx of illegal immigrants and minimum wage workers, towns with those homes will need more schools, more roads, more parking, more supermarkets, more sewers, more electricity and gas infrastructure, more police, and more firefighters.  Basically, more of everything, and YOU will be paying for this, NOT the developers of those 121,000 homes. Taxes will go up, home values will go down and prices of electricity and gas will continue to rise exponentially.

Recent refugees fleeing New York City mistakenly believe that Connecticut taxes are low because their points of reference are New York City or Westchester. But Fairfield county’s per capita tax is only slightly behind Westchester.  Overall, Connecitcut’s real estate taxes are the third highest in the nation, and CT’s total tax burden is the second highest in the country.

If you keep voting for Democrats or their RINO sidekicks, this will only get worse.  We don’t need more housing than the market provides naturally, we need a strong economy which creates good jobs and provides growth opportunities. What we don’t need are the low-cost mortgages Democrats promoted in the 1990s and early 2000s, pushing homes on people who couldn’t afford them, and we don’t need the zoning over-rides or housing subsidies for first-time buyers or zoning mandates Democrats are pushing now.  These kinds of government interventions never work, but they are especially damaging when the housing shortage is imaginary.

Next time you hear about a “housing crisis” ask why employment and population are stagnant in Connecticut while growing elsewhere?  One answer can be found in fake crises created by Democrats and amplified by developers and construction companies who stand to profit, and by a shallow and partisan press. 

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