Goshen Cost-Burdened Households Plummet

A recent CT Mirror article comparing 2011 Census data with 2021 data reported that Goshen had the second highest drop in percentage of cost-burdened households of all towns in the State.

As the article explains, “Housing is typically the biggest expense for most people. There’s a lot of debate about how much of one's income should go towards it, but a widely accepted threshold is about 30%, which has its origins in federal legislation regarding affordable housing for renters. If one is above the threshold, they’re considered cost-burdened.”

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According to the cited Census Bureau data, 40% of renters and homeowners in Connecticut were cost-burdened in 2011. Goshen’s rate was close to that average with 39.1% cost-burdened. Ten years later, in 2021, as the state’s share dropped 6 percentage points to 34%, Goshen’s rate was cut nearly in half, plummeting to 20.7%, an 18.3% drop. Only Ashford had a steeper reduction, going from 39.3% to 19.8%, a 19.5% drop.

What’s Behind the Data?

The two factors most directly influencing the data as reported by the Census are housing costs and income. Although both increased over the past decade, income growth has significantly outpaced the rise in housing costs in Goshen.

All data reported herein is derived from the American Community Survey, a more extensive form of the Census that is distributed to a portion of all Census respondents. The survey collects and reports data over 4-year blocks of time. As raw census data can be extremely difficult to navigate, independent analyses are published by a number of entities. For this review, The Goshen News relied primarily on two such sources, CT Data Collaborative (CTData.org) and Census Reporter (CensusReporter.org). Both services summarize and organize U. S. Census Bureau data to make it easier to visualize and understand.

Goshen Median Household Income rose 34.8% from $81,528 in 2010-14 to $109,886 in 2015-19, according to CTData.org. Per Capita income rose even more, a staggering 55.5%. Census Reporter’s 2021 data indicates still higher numbers, with Median Household Income of $127,344. That figure is roughly 50% higher than Litchfield County as a whole and is also 50% higher than the overall figure for the entire State of Connecticut. Overall, Goshenites have clearly become significantly more affluent in the past 10 years.

Census Reporter table of per capita and household income rates in Goshen in 2021

Meanwhile, median home values in Goshen declined 13.5% in the wake of the 2009 recession, from $381,200 in 2010-14 to $329,900 in 2015-19. In 2021 the Median Home Value was reported to be $344,600, an increase of roughly 4.5% from 2015-19 but still 9.6% below the 2010-14 median value. The increases will probably trend higher as additional data from the 2021-2 Covid real estate “boom” are more fully factored in.

9% of homes were valued at less than $200,000, 37% of all homes were valued at less than $300,000. 2% were valued at more than $1 million.

Census Data Controversies

The manner in which cost-encumbered housing is calculated and reported is not without its detractors, however. Official percentages are not a simple calculation of the number of burdened properties as a proportion of the total number of properties. Two factors impacting the official calculation, significant in Goshen, lend credence to the assertion that the officially reported rates of cost-burdened housing are significantly overstated.

First, the Census ignores second homes that are not principal residences, categorizing them as “vacant”. In Goshen, that amounts to roughly 25% of all homes that are seasonally or occasionally used. Second, homes without mortgages are similarly ignored, and in Goshen only about half of all homes have mortgages.

The Town of Goshen’s 2022-2027 Housing Plan states that there were 174 cost-burdened units in 2020. Although that figure represents just 10.5% of the Town’s estimated 1,664 housing units, after excluding seasonal homes and homes with fully paid-off mortgages, the official number was calculated to be 30%. The recently-reported 2021 data dropped the official rate to 20.7%.

Discrepancies in official definitions of terminology, as compared with more intuitive perceptions of the words used in that terminology, are not unique to the cost-burdened household data. Similar controversies have arisen over the term “Affordable Housing”, which has specific differences from what might naturally be understood as “affordable”.

In a recent CT Insider article, Anika Singh Lemar, a professor of law at Yale University with a specialty in housing, defines “affordable” in two ways. First, there’s “affordable” with a lowercase “a,” which she said is within an individual or family’s budget, a “reasonable cost to the person who's occupying it.” Then there’s “affordable” with an uppercase “A,” which Singh Lemar said is housing where a landlord, through subsidies or agreement, “can never charge rent in excess of a certain amount and that amount is tied to what people make”.

Uppercase “A” affordable housing must be deed-restricted for 40 years to be tied to median incomes. Connecticut’s Affordable Housing law, 8-30g, stipulates that 30 percent of an affordable housing development must be capital A “Affordable.” The law, enacted in 1989, gives developers the opportunity to take a town to court if it rejects their proposals for certain affordable housing. Municipalities are exempt if 10% of their total housing stock is designated affordable.

During the current legislative session, a Republican proposal would have redefined affordable housing. Lower case “a”, or “naturally affordable” housing, would have counted toward a town’s overall upper case “A” Affordable Housing percentage. In Goshen, therefore, any house that could be afforded by a household with an income of $101, 875 would have qualified as Affordable.

Housing Committee ranking member Rep. Tony Scott, R-Monroe, was quoted in a CT Mirror article on this subject. “The biggest overall concern I hear [about 8-30g] is that Hartford is taking away local control of town elected officials in deciding what is best for their municipality.” “This is not a one-size fits all situation and the majority party in Hartford is attempting to make it that way and doing a disservice to a vast majority of municipalities who are not cities.”

Others have advocated scrapping 8-30g altogether, a position taken by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stepanowski during the last election.

According to CT Mirror, Rafie Podolsky, a housing attorney at Connecticut Legal Services, said the GOP measure would have violated the intention of the law and would mean many towns could be exempted from the court remedies open to developers without any more housing actually being built.

“By simply re-labeling something that already exists as affordable housing and doing it for the purpose of telling towns that you can freely turn down any developer who wants to come in and do some additional density, you have just eliminated the statute,” Podolsky said.

In a March 24^th article, the Hartford Courant reported that the GOP measure did not receive a vote in committee. Procedurally, measures that do not have the support needed to pass will often not be subject to formal votes. The housing measures that are likely to advance in the current session are focused on transit hub centered high-density housing, which appears to be targeted at the I-95/Metro North corridor in lower Fairfield County.