Dozens of CT tenants demand ‘green social housing’ as answer to CT crisis

Bridgeport resident Catherine Parker said that the heat in her supportive housing unit currently doesn’t work, along with the elevator that keeps breaking down.

Parker, a senior citizen who volunteers with the CT Tenants Union , drove up to Hartford on Saturday to join dozens of other tenants and activists demanding action to solve the state’s housing crisis through creating green social housing.

Green social housing is a type of affordable housing that is both environmentally friendly and community controlled.

“Housing is such an issue throughout the state but in Bridgeport, the situation is just grim,” Parker said. “Our elevator wasn’t working for three weeks and this was not the first time. This made it extremely hard to do grocery shopping and laundry. For the last two years we were without heat during a particularly cold spell. The answer is always the same, no funding for repairs.”

Tenants from the local community, alongside organizations including Make the Road Connecticut , hosted the town hall in conjunction with town halls across the country. The event was organized by the Center for Popular Democracy to call attention to the nationwide housing crisis.

“Access to safe and affordable housing should be a basic human right,” Parker said. “I have a disability, but when you fight for things like heat or an elevator, you know that you can be evicted at any time only because you’re going outside of management. Now they see you as the problem, instead of the real issues you’re dealing with every day.”

Connecticut is lacking about 92,500 housing units that are affordable and available for its lowest income renters, according to recent estimates from the state’s Housing Finance Authority. Several towns have faced community resistance to affordable housing development in recent years. Most of the state’s afforable housing stock was built before 1970 and is rapidly aging, advocates said.

The town hall called on public officials to clamp down on corporate landlords accused of price gouging. Tenants also called on the state to establish rent caps and abolish no-fault evictions. Connecticut’s “Just Cause” eviction law protects residents who are at least 62 years old or have a disability, and live in a building with five or more units, from groundless evictions. But advocates say the protections should be available to all tenants.

“We got to fight for these things, I’m here because I want to show up and work collectively,” Bridgeport councilman Jorge Cruz said. “You know what’s making it difficult to make these policies approved at the state Capitol? It’s because a lot of these lawmakers are landlords themselves. We got to stand up.”

Stephen Underwood can be reached at sunderwood@courant.com .