When Connecticut lawmakers rushed an omnibus housing bill through a November special session, they insisted the situation was dire enough to justify extraordinary measures. Public hearings were skipped. The normal legislative calendar was abandoned. Residents were told the state faced a housing emergency that demanded immediate action.
Just as important, supporters assured skeptical lawmakers and municipalities that the bill removed “Fair Share” housing mandates. In their place, they said, the law would establish a more flexible, regional planning model centered on councils of governments (COGs), giving towns greater input and discretion.
Instead of state-imposed municipal housing quotas, the state would set regional targets, COGs would recommend municipal goals, and municipalities could comment, suggest changes, and argue feasibility. Fair Share, lawmakers said, was out. Flexibility was in.
The critical question, however, has always been how housing growth targets would actually be generated — the issue at the heart of the Fair Share debate.
Under the law, the state does not directly assign housing numbers to individual towns. Instead, it calculates overall housing need, allocates growth targets at the regional level, and relies on COGs to translate those regional targets into recommended municipal affordable housing goals. Towns may comment and request adjustments, but the starting point remains a state-generated number. Once that number exists, the debate shifts from whether targets should exist at all to how closely municipalities are expected to align with them.
That distinction matters.
When asked whether the state was developing a new methodology for setting those targets, officials confirmed that the work is already underway — and that it will rely on data from the 2025 Fair Share study, because it is “fresh” and contains “good data.”
In other words, Fair Share quotas may be gone on paper, but the math behind them is not. The mandate was removed from the statute, not the analytical framework that produced it. Those figures are now shaping housing targets through a different process, but they remain central to how expectations are set.
To carry the emergency through implementation, the law also created a new body: the Council on Housing Development. This was not a symbolic task force. It was written directly into statute and charged with coordinating state agencies, overseeing housing growth targets, reviewing discretionary grant programs, and intervening when implementation stalled.
The law also imposed a clear first test. The council was required to convene no later than January 1.
It did not.
The deadline passed without a meeting. Appointments were incomplete. Only weeks later — on Feb. 3, after public scrutiny intensified — did the council finally meet for the first time.
What unfolded during that meeting explains why the missed deadline matters.
Early in the discussion, the failure to meet the Jan. 1 requirement was acknowledged almost casually. One chair described the council as being “a little bit running late on,” before assuring members that the group was now “up and running.” No one disputed the statutory requirement. No one suggested the deadline had been satisfied in substance. The lapse was treated as an administrative delay rather than a legal failure.
As the meeting continued, state officials walked through the council’s responsibilities and openly acknowledged that several statutory deadlines would be difficult — if not impossible — to meet as written.
A wastewater capacity study required by mid-year was described as an “enormous undertaking” that was “not really feasible” within the timeline set by law. Rather than completing the study as required, agencies proposed returning to the council with a summary of existing data, a description of gaps, and ideas for how a study might eventually be conducted.
Other obligations were framed similarly. Guidelines for municipal housing growth plans, due within weeks, were described as something that would be issued in basic form and then “more fully fleshed out” over the course of the year.
Much of the meeting focused not on immediate action, but to future process: inventories, frameworks, advisory groups, and coordination that would come later. Taken together, the discussion revealed a consistent pattern: deadlines softened, requirements reframed, and expectations lowered.
The Council on Housing Development was billed as the body that would keep housing policy on track. At its first meeting, however, the message was clear: deadlines were negotiable, and statutory requirements were being treated more like guidelines than obligations.
None of this denies that Connecticut faces real housing challenges. It does. But process matters — especially when lawmakers invoke emergency powers to bypass public hearings and ordinary scrutiny.
When legislation is rushed through without adequate debate, the consequences tend to surface quickly. Missed deadlines, unworkable requirements, and the quiet return of Fair Share math are not isolated problems. They are the predictable result of passing a bill first and figuring out how it works later.
The emergency may have justified speed. It does not justify slippage — or the erosion of the assurances that were used to secure passage in the first place.
