180-Unit Affordable Housing Project Expected To Receive Final Ok From Judge: Report

MILFORD, CT — Residents will soon learn whether a developer's proposal to construct a 180-unit affordable housing complex on 26-acres of land on Wheelers Farms Road will be able to proceed, the Milford Mirror reports.

The Planning and Zoning Board denied the project in 2015 and a Superior Court Judge overturned the board's rejection. The judge sent the case back to the board, and the board in November 2016 again rejected the proposal. The attorney for the applicant believes since Milford refused the judge's order to re-zone the property that they can begin their project and a judge is expected to give a final ruling on the matter soon, the Milford Mirror reports.

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Of course as you're well aware, when a developer files an affordable housing project with a community it doesn't need to conform to local zoning laws. The only way a community can reject a proposed affordable housing application is if it can prove there are real health and safety issues, which is often hard to prove.

A community can reject an affordable housing project too if 10 percent of its housing stock is defined as affordable according to state guidelines. Milford is only at around 6.5 percent and therefore is virtually powerless when it comes to rejecting affordable housing applications.

History in Milford shows that the best the city can do in the case of affordable housing projects it doesn't want is to try and negotiate with the developer to reduce the density of the project. Milford did prevail in one landmark affordable housing case a decade ago when a judge ruled that the city couldn't be forced to install sewers, which the developer, AvalonBay at the time, needed for their project to move forward.

Read the full Milford Mirror story here.

Written by Brian McCready

(Editor's Note: This story first ran previously but here it is again in case you missed it.)