What started as a 10-line bill directing the Commissioner of Housing to “study” solutions for homelessness and housing costs has morphed into a gargantuan 92-page proposal that overrides local zoning control and appeases progressive housing activists.
Initially, H.B. 5002 — called a “big, beautiful bill” by House Speaker Matt Ritter (D-Hartford) during a May 14 press conference — was little more than a placeholder posing as real legislation. However, on Wednesday (May 21), with only two weeks before the end of session, the bill was heavily revised with a ‘bait and switch’ tactic: a strike-all amendment dropped with less than 24 hours’ notice.
The goal was for the House to pass it on Thursday (May 22), but lawmakers eventually shelved the vote due to bipartisan confusion and backlash.
According to the CT Mirror, the bill had stalled “under threats of a filibuster and a split Democratic caucus.” Lawmakers now say a reworked version may come up for a vote on Tuesday (May 27) — but after hours of closed-door negotiations, no one is quite sure what will remain in the final product.
“I try to remind everyone this is somewhat of a normal part of the process in which there are fits, starts, restarts, amendments made, but I think eventually we are going to get there with this housing bill,” House Majority Leader Rep. Jason Rojas (D-East Hartford) told CT Mirror Thursday evening, downplaying the delay as a matter of time, not substance. He also claimed he had worked to compromise with Republicans on several issues.
But when a so-called priority bill collapses under its own weight and can’t even make it to the House floor with just two weeks left in session, it says plenty about how “big” and “beautiful” it really is.
Republican Response
House Republicans held their own press conference on Thursday, calling the bill a Trojan horse for failed progressive zoning experiments that would erode local control while doing little to address Connecticut’s actual affordability crisis.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora (R-North Branford) said Democrats have spent years driving out high-paying jobs with bad policy and are now trying to paper over the damage with housing mandates.
“We certainly do have an affordability issue,” Rep. Candelora said. “But I think we’ve got to look more broadly at what are the policies that they are passing that is only causing us to have economic loss in the state of Connecticut.”
Rep. Tony Scott (R-Monroe) warned that the bill quietly revives the controversial “Fair Share” housing model, which assigns every municipality a quota of affordable units based on income — not on land availability, infrastructure, or growth capacity. He criticized the removal of a key provision requiring legislative approval of those allocations, calling the methodology “massively flawed.”
Rep. Joe Zullo (R-East Haven) pointed to the bill’s sweeping parking reforms that will eliminate off-street parking requirements as another example of state overreach.
“It’s a grab at local control,” Rep. Zullo said. “You can cook it any way you want, but it’s a mandate.”
Local Officials Speak Out
It’s not just Republicans sounding the alarm.
The Connecticut Conference of Municipalities (CCM) warned on social media that H.B. 5002 represents yet another wave of unfunded mandates, writing, “Now comes HB 5002 — a bill that overrides local zoning and piles on new mandates/puts town discretionary funding at risk. We need more housing, but this isn’t the way to do it.”
In a follow-up post, CCM called the bill “filled with onerous mandates and unrealistic housing goals.”
That message resonated far beyond Hartford.
Danielle Dobin, a Democrat on Westport’s Board of Finance, blasted the bill in an opinion piece, calling it a sweeping “aircraft carrier” of legislation that would instantly rezone over 400 commercial lots in Westport to allow nine-unit housing developments with no public hearings and no off-street parking.
She also raised red flags about provisions that would require towns like Westport to pay developers’ legal fees in 8-30g lawsuits, allow as-of-right office-to-residential conversions without reassessment for three years, and condition vital infrastructure grants on compliance with aggressive zoning mandates.
“This is a moment for Westporters to stand together,” Dobin wrote. “This bill will immediately transform our zoning to allow for thousands of new units… with little to no parking for the new residents.”
The Connecticut Council of Small Towns (COST) also opposed the bill, warning that it imposes “sweeping changes that undermine local planning processes, impose difficult compliance burdens on towns, and create greater uncertainty” about access to critical state infrastructure funding.
COST criticized the Fair Share housing mandate for ignoring basic realities like water and wastewater capacity, and for tying discretionary funding — like the Small Town Economic Assistance Program and the Clean Water Fund — to compliance with zoning mandates that many small towns simply can’t meet.
The group also expressed concerns about new legal liabilities for towns under the 8-30g affordable housing appeals process, the forced elimination of minimum parking requirements, and a mandate for municipalities to allow as-of-right conversions of commercial buildings to residential units.
COST called the proposal a “mega housing mandate” and questioned the wisdom of pushing complex, costly changes on municipalities already grappling with budget deficits, inflation, and cuts in federal aid.
Whether the final version of H.B. 5002 includes all of those provisions remains to be seen — but the fact that even local Democrats are calling it an overreach speaks volumes.
What’s clear is that this is an eleventh-hour Frankenstein bill — stitched together from various other bills that couldn’t pass on their own. The rushed rollout and internal confusion suggest that even many Democrats didn’t fully understand what they were being asked to support.
At this point, it seems House leadership is scrambling to pass something — anything — just to say they did something on housing. But a 92-page omnibus jammed through at the last minute, rewritten in secrecy, isn’t reform — it’s bad policymaking.
They called it big. They called it beautiful. They just didn’t say what’s actually in it.
Take Action
With so much at stake for towns across Connecticut, now is the time to speak up.
Click here to tell lawmakers to vote no on H.B. 5002 and to defend local control.
