Connecticut's racist NIMBYs have used zoning laws and dirty tricks to make it one of the most unequal, racially segregated states in the union

Racism and oligarchy aren't merely Blue/Red phenomena: Connecticut has had a Democratic legislature for 22 years and a Democratic governor for eight years, and it is one of the nation's most racially segregated, unequal states, divided into affluent, all-white cities and towns with virtually no affordable housing and poor, underserved towns primarily inhabited by racialized people, whose children are five times more likely to be imprisoned than the white children across the city line a few miles away.

The problem isn't new: 30 years ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court allowed the state to overrule local governments that refused planning permission for high-density, lower-cost homes. The state legislature used this freedom to pass bill 8-30g, which gives developers the powers to seek court orders overturning planning decisions that go against any development that include 30% low-income units.

Despite this, it's rare that developers manage to invoke the law, because the lengthy court battles associated with 8-30g challenges are a powerful disincentive (a case in Westport has been underway since 2005!). And some city governments claim that developers used threats of 8-30g challenges to win permission to build high-rise luxury condos: they say that developers demand permission for luxury condos on pain of having the building plan re-filed with 8-30g-compliant low-income housing, effectively threatening city governments with poor people if they don't get permission to build high-rise luxury housing.

Meanwhile, 8-30g is under sustained legislative assault, with the state legislature frequently introducing laws to weaken it.

Though the official rhetoric about keeping poor and brown people away from white enclaves isn't overtly racist, the dog-whistles are pretty loud, with claims that low-income housing would cut against the "character of the community" or reduce the "quality of the schools," or that the communities would become less "attractive and desirable" if low-income housing were built. Read the rest